Just Dancing
by Clara Barton
Summary: Trowa has a mission, and it requires asking Sally Po to be his partner. Of course, this undercover op isn't the kind that sends them to a distant colony to track down weapons smugglers. It's the kind where he needs a girlfriend to take to an ex-lover's wedding. For the End of Summer Block Party/Trope Fest on Tumblr
1. Chapter 1

A/N: For Ro, who is amazing in all the ways

A/N2: For the GWBlock Party on Tumblr's end of summer trope fest. I decided to do some fake dating.

A/N3: Badass, Preventers Hilde is totally inspired by Kangofu-CB's amazing fic, Mission: Redacted. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and go devour it. This will still be waiting when you get back.

A/N4: Eternal thanks to Ro for support and for beta reading

A/N5: Title from the song by Sylvan Esso

Warnings: language, smut, slight violence

Pairings: 3xS, others - I'm not giving it away yet sorry if that's going to bother you

 _Just Dancing_

Trowa stared at the invitation for what felt like the millionth time.

The card stock was thick, crisp, the color a silvery white that looked like moonlight.

 _Fitting_ , all things considered.

Trowa tried not to be bitter. He tried _so_ damn hard not to be bitter. He had been trying for three _years_ to stop feeling… not even bitter. Jealous. Envious. Covetous. Betrayed. He wasn't sure what the right word was, to describe the creeping blackness that seemed to constrict his heart every time he thought about it. About _them_.

With a sigh, Trowa picked up the invitation.

He had put this off for as long as he could - too long, really. He had, of course, immediately RSVP'd; had, with a grimace, checked the box for a plus one and sent the response off in the mail before his brain had even had time to properly consider that checking a _plus one_ meant he had to _acquire_ a plus one.

Which, in reality, wasn't much of a problem. Trowa had survived this long in life by having a very realistic assessment of himself - his abilities, his weaknesses, his strengths. He knew that, if he needed a date, he could find one.

But he needed more than just a body on his arm. He needed…

He needed to look as far from pathetic and bitter as possible. And a random, attractive date was _not_ the answer. It was, in fact, the surest way to elicit pity.

And Trowa did not want, or need, or know how to cope, with pity.

Trowa sighed again and leaned back in his chair.

He needed…

An idea came to him that was brilliant in its simplicity, the ease of execution...

The catastrophically high chance of failure if Trowa had the wrong partner.

He needed someone skilled in undercover work, someone attractive, someone he would plausibly _be_ attracted to. Someone not currently out on assignment.

Which eliminated Vasquez, Anderson, Brown, Lu and Andropov.

And left…

Trowa sat up and keyed his passcode into the desk computer. He clicked his way through the agent rosters until he was in the field agent file, and then opened the sub file that appeared on only three administrative access points, and accessed the file of agents that were cleared for undercover work.

 _Hilde Schbeiker_.

She was a definite no. She would, if Trowa even suggested his plan, likely punch him in the throat and laugh at him.

 _Matheus Cardoso_.

Not the worst choice. But there was that drunken night eighteen months ago, when Matheus had just returned from an op gone about so pear-shaped it might as well have been a pumpkin, and Trowa had already been drunk at the bar when Matheus walked in. The sex had been memorable only in that it was quick, brutal, and something that neither wanted to speak about ever again.

Trowa _could_ work with him. Had, actually, done a short undercover intel assignment three months ago with Matheus without incident. Except that they had fucked again, and it had been just as unspeakable as the first time.

No. Not Matheus.

 _Lee Jung-woo_.

He was a possibility. Trowa got on reasonably well with him and-

 _Status: indefinite administrative leave. Pending Director evaluation._

Jung-woo was a no, then. Even if Trowa _could_ convince him to do this, he wasn't about to risk Une coming after him. Or them.

 _Margaret Simone_.

A very hard _no_. Trowa and Maggie barely made it through _briefings_ without sniping at each other.

 _Etienne Moten_.

Considering the role Etienne had played in… everything, Trowa thought that he was probably the worst possible choice.

 _Sally Po_.

Trowa sat up straight in his chair.

Sally…

He rose to his feet and strode from his office, determined and the tiniest bit hopeful.

If he could get Sally to agree to do this…

She wasn't in her office. Or in any of the briefing rooms. Or interrogation rooms. Or break rooms. Or mess hall.

After doing a second pass by her office, he finally thought to check the gym. He _should_ have gone there first.

Sally was one of those people who _needed_ to be active, needed to be moving. When Une had slapped Sally with new recruit verbal assessment training last year, it had been _awful_. She had spent every morning locked in a room with, in her words, the sludge at the bottom of a never-washed oil cannister, trying to teach them how to communicate at a level normally acceptable for toddlers. It had not been a pleasant three months for Trowa, who had had the misfortune of being the only agent dumb enough to simply shrug his shoulders when Sally stormed into the training room and demanded a sparring match.

After three months of letting Sally work out her frustrations on his body in all the ways that Trowa normally didn't rank as high on his list of 'activities involving partners, sweating, swearing and close contact', he was relieved when Une finally rotated Sally back to active status and stuck someone else on rookie babysitting duty. Even if it _was_ him.

It gave him time for his bruises to heal, and for him to try very, very hard - with the aid of a lot of one-night stands and exorbitant beer tabs - to forget just how well Sally's lean, powerful body felt against his when she was trying to break out of his chokehold on her. He tried. And failed.

But then, failure in his personal life was something he had become quite intimate with, ever since…

She was in the gym, but clearly hadn't managed to find a victim and had resorted to the speedbag.

Trowa had seen her last mission debrief. She had, as usual, been successful and, as usual, minimized casualties.

But minimized didn't mean _no_ casualties.

It had baffled Trowa, the first time he had seen Sally react so strongly to one of her teammates getting picked up by med-evac.

He knew, from Wufei and Duo's stories, that Sally was one of the toughest people they had ever encountered - Gundam pilot or not - and that _nothing_ stopped her or seemed capable of slowing her down.

Wufei had been the one to sneer about emotions, about feminine weaknesses, while all Duo did was roll his eyes and tell him that Sally would kick his ass and his dick if she heard him say that.

Trowa didn't think it was that - didn't think it was whatever nebulous insulting symptom of womanhood that Wufei did - but there was no denying that Sally _felt_ loss and failure and _showed_ it.

For Trowa, who had learned very early in life that showing _any_ of what he felt or thought could be dangerous, she was a conundrum.

Sally felt things, was painfully open about her feelings, and didn't let it stop her. In fact, Trowa was fairly certain it was part of what made her such a nearly mythologically successful agent with Preventers.

It also meant that, when he walked into the gym and saw her working over the speedbag, saw the grimace on her face and the sweat staining the collar and back of her shirt, he knew that her last mission was still weighing heavily on her.

He hesitated - she might not, actually, be the best candidate for _his_ mission if she was still this much in her head.

Then again, he didn't have a lot of other options.

Trowa shoved his hands into his pockets and approached, taking a path that put him in her line of sight.

He saw the shift in her body, shoulders tensing and her form just that much off, when she realized she wasn't alone. But she didn't stop until he was only a few feet from her, until she seemed to have finished whatever reps she was counting off to herself.

"Barton."

"Po."

She lifted the hem of her shirt to wipe at her face, revealing her toned belly and the wicked looking scar that Trowa had only seen once, before it had become a scar, when she had earned the wound in the field while dragging Duo Maxwell's unconscious body to safety. Trowa had been on the recovery team for that op, had looked at his two blood-drenched comrades and had had a moment of indecision as to who he should go to first. Wufei, partnered with him, hadn't hesitated at all. He had shoved Trowa aside and gone straight for Maxwell.

"If you're here for a show, admission runs at twenty creds, Barton."

He jerked his gaze up to meet her eyes and Sally dropped her shirt back down, offering him an arched eyebrow as she did.

Trowa swallowed and lifted his shoulders, the closest he was going to come to an apology.

"Did everyone run away when you got here, or should I check the med bay?"

She rolled her eyes.

"It was only the new recruits, working on PT. Gomez took them to run laps."

"Wise choice."

"Was there something you needed?"

Sally - open, honest, painfully direct. She was, in many ways, the antithesis to Trowa.

"The wedding is this weekend."

"I'm aware. Painfully aware."

It was his turn to arch an eyebrow. He'd always wondered about Sally and…

"Do you have any idea how much I'm _not_ looking forward to parading around in a dress and heels all night on Saturday? And eating awful, cold food and drinking watered-down cocktails?"

Trowa, who had been forced into just as many Preventers formal receptions as Sally, well knew the pain of cold food and watered-down cocktails. _Too_ well.

"You always clean up well," he pointed out, thinking back to the black dress she had worn to the fifth Eve Commemoration a few months ago. It had been sculpted to her body, clinging to her torso and thighs, and ending somewhere above the knee that was far closer to inappropriate than appropriate. He remembered seeing her ease off the black pumps she had worn whenever she was seated at her table and didn't think anyone was looking.

"Thanks for the glowing commendation, Barton," she snorted derisively, and leaned down to pick up her water bottle. "I _know_ how to dress like a civilian. Just like you _know_ how to get to the point. Doesn't mean either of us likes to do it."

Despite himself, Trowa felt his lips twitch at the jibe. He bowed his head momentarily to acknowledge the point in her favor.

"I need a date."

She raised both eyebrows.

"So you _are_ going."

Trowa scowled.

"I sent in my RSVP two months ago."

"Sure, I know. Wufei told me."

Trowa nodded. Of course. Aside from Duo and Trowa, Sally was the closest thing to family Wufei had.

"Then why the surprise?"

She shrugged noncommittally and sipped from her water.

He stared her down.

"Sizeable betting pool among the other agents," she finally admitted. "Odds are that you won't show."

Trowa rolled his eyes.

"And that's why I placed a fifty cred bet on me attending."

Sally looked momentarily baffled, but then she laughed.

"O'Cochran?"

Trowa smirked himself and nodded. Sally laughed again.

"Oh, fuck you. Of course you did. O'Cochran."

It was a running joke, of sorts, between them.

Both Sally and Trowa had been among the first agents that Une commissioned. It had only been three months after the Barton rebellion, and Trowa, who had decided to keep his name, didn't actually have any _real_ documents to support his identity. His fakes had been fine, during the wars, when the Earthsphere had been in a state of constant turmoil and migration for almost three decades and shoddy, forged or non-existent documents were a routine headache.

And so, for six months, while Une waited to see what the fallout would be and if the former Gundam pilots would be rounded up with the other extant rebels from the wars for trials, Trowa had used a new fake identity: Jim O'Cochran.

Sally had called him Cocky, barely even able to _say_ the name without laughing, and no amount of silent glaring from Trowa would make her stop.

After six painful months, Trowa had dropped the identity and resumed his previous alias. Une had classified all information regarding Jim O'Cochran, and Sally, the only agent to have worked with Trowa during the transition period, had sworn not to reveal the connection, tears of mirth in her eyes as she did so.

In the years since, whenever something awful or annoying happened at Preventers HQ - the septic flooding the men's locker room; the encrypt system going haywire and locking everyone out of their email accounts; misfiled leave paperwork; misfiled resignation papers - Sally, and later, begrudgingly, Trowa would mutter _fucking O'Cochran._

"Good thing I haven't placed my bet yet," Sally decided.

She tossed her water bottle back to the floor and started to stretch.

Trowa forced himself _not_ to pay too much attention to the way Sally's muscles shifted, or the way her t-shirt clung to her back and chest, or the tendril of blonde hair that had escaped from the ponytail at the back of her head.

"So you wanted to ask me if I was going to the wedding? Why? You want a drinking buddy?"

Trowa shrugged nonchalantly.

"Something like that."

Sally snorted and looked up at him even as she bent over and touched the floor with her palms.

"Barton, tell me what you want or I'm going to tell Ernst that you've rigged his betting pool."

"You wouldn't."

"I'm annoyed, and you're being even more mysterious and constipated than normal."

" _Constipated_?"

She smirked at his outrage.

"Sorry. You're being even more oblique and verbally repressed than normal. Better?"

Trowa snorted and crossed his arms. It was definitely _not_ better.

But, she was right - he should just get to the point.

"I need a date for the wedding."

She straightened up and considered him.

"How many people shot you down before you came to me?"

"I do _not_ get shot down, Po."

She lifted her eyebrows.

"That's because you exactingly calculate your chances of success before even _thinking_ about approaching someone."

"And?"

She rolled her eyes.

" _And_ that's not exactly a good way to meet people, Barton. It's a good way to end up in boring, dead-end one-night stands."

"If your one-night stands are boring, you aren't doing it right. Want me to give you a few tips?"

" _There's_ the sassy Barton I know and love. _No_ , I don't want or need your tips. I do just fine on my own, thanks."

Trowa could well believe it.

Sally kept her personal life private. In all the years he had worked with her, she hadn't once brought a guest to a Preventers function - whether it be official or casual. She hadn't even brought a guest to Heero and Relena's wedding last year. Had simply shown up alone, dressed in an eye-catching lavender jumpsuit, and spent the entire reception idly shooting down one guest after another until Trowa had asked her to dance and they had spent the rest of the night racing each other to empty the free bar.

So, while he had never met any of Sally's conquests, he found it nearly impossible to believe that she _didn't_ have a string of broken-hearted lovers still worshipping the ground she walked on.

Sally's very private private life also, of course, made her perfect for Trowa's plan. If he and Sally _had_ been dating for months and were wildly in love, no one would know - and no one would find it suspicious that they didn't realize the two of them were dating.

Bad, drunken mission and post-mission sex aside, Trowa generally kept his own affairs as far away from Preventers as he could. He had, after all, learned the very painful of lesson of having to work alongside an ex.

"I haven't asked anyone else."

She looked him over consideringly.

"Alright. Better you than Dubois."

Trowa stared.

"Alex Dubois asked you to be his date?"

Sally shrugged.

"Not really. He didn't get an invite. He just oh-so-casually mentioned that he didn't have plans this weekend, in case I wanted some company on the dance floor or in my hotel room."

Trowa snorted. _That_ sounded very much like a line from the Internal Affairs agent.

"So is this a 'we drive out to the coast together' kind of date, or am I just supposed to sit with you during the rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception?"

And here, of course, was the moment when he needed to lay out _all_ of the parameters for her.

And, likely, it was the moment immediately preceding Sally calling him an idiot and telling him _no way in hell_.

"I was thinking it would be the kind of date where we'd actually been _dating_ for a few months."

Sally stared at him with a frown for a moment, but the expression cleared and her eyebrows raised as she put together his intention.

"You want me to be your _fake_ date. Your date-date."

"Yes. My _date-date_ ," he echoed the term distastefully.

"Why?"

She was looking at him with what Trowa was uncomfortably forced to admit was concern.

"I can't go _alone_. That would look pathetic."

Sally shrugged, but the set of Trowa's jaw prevented her from arguing the point.

"Okay… if you don't want to go alone, there are _dozens_ of agents who would be thrilled to have the chance to spend an entire day getting ignored by you. Plus, there's that brother and sister who run the coffee shop two blocks down. You could have your pick between them. Hell, you could probably take _both_ of them. Except then we get into the incest thing and that's-"

"Sally."

"Too much? Incest not your thing?"

" _No_ ," he ground out. "It is very much not my thing."

She smirked.

"Really? Because Relena and Zechs-"

"They weren't at the same time. Not even the same month."

Sally's lips twitched as she fought back a remark about the very, very lame distinction.

"I need it to look like I've moved on. Like I'm _happy_."

"And have you? _Are_ you?"

"Have I moved on from ruining the best thing that ever happened to me by sleeping with Etienne fucking Moten and having to just _watch_ while _they_ fell in love and realized how perfect their world was without me in it? No. I haven't moved on. And no, I'm not happy," he added unnecessarily.

The expression on Sally's face made it clear that he had said _way_ too much.

 _How's that for verbally repressed?_ he thought bitterly.

"I wondered why you and Duo stopped… being you and Duo. He never said anything."

"No, he wouldn't." Trowa couldn't help but feel bitter about _that_ too. Of course Duo wouldn't say anything, wouldn't sell out Trowa for the asshole that he was. Because, despite everything, Duo still loved him. He didn't _trust_ Trowa, not anymore - and it turned out that Duo's trust, once irrevocably broken, pretty much put the kibosh on any kind of romantic relationship - but he still loved him. At least, that's what Duo had said when he packed his duffel bag that night, after telling Trowa that Moten hadn't been able to keep his mouth shut about what a great lay Trowa had been while Duo had been away on a deep undercover assignment for thirteen months.

"And Wufei - how did Wufei not murder you?"

Trowa offered her a bitter smirk.

"Duo didn't tell him either. He threatened to feed Moten his own balls if he kept running his mouth, and he dumped me." Trowa shrugged. "He didn't want to take away my friendship with Wufei."

Except, of course, as soon as Trowa had realized he wasn't going to be able to get Duo back, as soon as he had seen the signs of Wufei's years of silent longing for Duo evolve into actual overtures, overtures that Duo tentatively accepted, Trowa had known he had lost them both.

And then, of course, there had been the mission, nine months ago, when Wufei had nearly died, and Duo had had a shouting match with Une in his lover's hospital room that had ended with the pair of them resigning their commissions and moving to La Rochelle and buying some crumbling farmhouse to live in and accepting a loan from Quatre so they could buy a bookstore.

Trowa hadn't seen either of them since the shouting match, which he and Sally had witnessed from the hallway outside of Wufei's room.

The expression on Sally's face had changed. It was still concerned, but there was another emotion there, and one that Trowa didn't care to examine too closely.

"So you want me to be your date so you can… what? Rub their noses in the fact that you aren't alone and miserable?"

" _No_." He didn't want that, at all.

Frustrated, Trowa ran a hand through his hair.

"Wufei is… concerned about me. He feels _guilty_ about him and Duo."

"I know."

Trowa raised an eyebrow, and Sally shrugged.

"I was his drinking buddy when he still worked for Preventers, and I've visited them a few times in La Rochelle."

Trowa was very proud of himself for not asking Sally how they were, what their life was like. He knew a little, from what Quatre had told him unsolicited, what Hilde had sneeringly informed him of - he didn't know if Duo had actually _told_ her what had happened or if she just knew the two of them well enough to have worked it out for herself - and what Wufei vaguely referred to in the letters he sent Trowa every few weeks.

"I don't want him to feel guilty. He shouldn't. I'm the only one who has something to feel guilty about."

"And so, what… showing up with me at their wedding is going to convince Wufei that he shouldn't?"

Trowa shrugged.

"Hopefully. If we've been dating for - six, seven months - maybe all I needed was for them to move away so that I could put my life back together. Maybe Duo will stop thinking he's consigned me to a life of one-night stands and Wufei will stop thinking he's betrayed me."

Even though, if Trowa was honest with himself - and the _one_ person he was consistently honest with _was_ himself - betrayal was exactly what it felt like. And maybe he had earned the knife in his back, but that didn't change the fact that it fucking hurt.

Sally was silent for several long, tense moments.

"I've already booked a room at a bed and breakfast. It's… _cozy_."

"I booked a suite for us at La Villa Dolce - it's on the third floor, has a private terrace with an outdoor jacuzzi, and a couch that looks long enough for me to sleep on."

Sally looked a little impressed.

"Hm. And you're going to foot the bill?"

Trowa nodded.

"I'll pay for everything."

Sally snorted.

"Slow down there. If you want to make anyone think we're dating, or that you even _know_ me, you'll let me pay my own half."

"Fair." He too-late remembered that Sally always insisted on paying her own bar tabs, no matter how many dreamy-eyed agents or would-be suitors offered to pick up the tab for her.

"But you can definitely pay for the hotel. I looked at La Villa Dolce. It's not cheap."

No, it most definitely wasn't.

But what was ten years of hazard pay for if not frivolously expensive weekends on the coast of France with your fake girlfriend?


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: For Ro, who is amazing in all the ways

A/N2: For the GWBlock Party on Tumblr's end of summer trope fest. I decided to do some fake dating.

A/N3: Badass, Preventers Hilde is totally inspired by Kangofu-CB's amazing fic, Mission: Redacted. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and go devour it. This will still be waiting when you get back.

A/N4: Eternal thanks to Ro for support and for beta reading

A/N5: Also a huge thanks to Kango-CB, who babysat and cheerled me through writing the things and seriously, thank you.

A/N6: Title from the song by Sylvan Esso

Warnings: language, smut, slight violence

Pairings: 3xS, others - I'm not giving it away yet sorry if that's going to bother you

Just Dancing

"Here. Your dossier was crap. I rewrote it into something we could work with."

It was Friday morning, and Sally's way of greeting Trowa at the airport was to toss a folder at him as she walked up to the waiting area beside their gate.

Trowa managed to catch the folder and not spill any of his coffee, and he glared up at Sally's smirking face.

She was dressed casually, in jeans and a gray oxford shirt, sleeves rolled up and hem tucked into the waistband of her pants. She had a leather satchel slung over one shoulder and a small, rolling suitcase at her feet.

"What was wrong with my dossier?"

He refused to open the folder. He had, after all, spent hours crafting a cover for them - when they had decided to start dating, what their anniversary was, hobbies they shared, dates they had been on, a weekend getaway a few months ago in London, a handful of arguments they could reference.

"You really think I would start dating you because we got drunk and had sex one time?"

Trowa shrugged.

"It's how all of my relationships start."

"Oh, for the love of-" She gave an angry huff and sat down in the chair beside him.

She gave his coffee a speculative glance and then eased it from his hand, ignoring Trowa's growl of protest.

She sipped from it and sighed in relief.

"I didn't want to have to clean the coffee pot, so I didn't make any this morning. This is good. A little too sweet, but I can deal with that."

"I'll have to remember that for next time."

She offered him a smirk.

"You will, won't you?"

She took another sip and then tapped the folder.

"Better read up."

Angrily, he flipped it open.

She hadn't scrapped everything. She had, in fact, kept a fair amount of the backstory that he had concocted.

Their Inciting Incident as Trowa had labeled it - Sally had kept the wording but added quotes around it in bold, making her feelings very easy to guess - had been changed completely, however.

"You saved me from drowning."

"Mhm. It's a well-known fact all of you colony sprog can't swim for shit."

"I can swim," he tersely informed her. "My PT times in the pool are the second best."

"Oh? Are they?"

The glimmer in her eyes made it very, very clear that she was well aware of that fact.

He sighed and looked at the brief again.

They had been on a mission together, Alaska, of all places, and he had fallen overboard in rough weather and she had saved him and he-

"This says I followed you around like a pathetic loser for two months before you finally let me buy you a cup of coffee."

"It doesn't say pathetic loser." She leaned close, shoulder to shoulder, and ran her finger under a line of text. "Like a lovesick puppy."

"I don't see the difference."

"That's because you refuse to attempt to date someone until after you've already established that they enjoy fucking you. You're afraid to put yourself out there, afraid to be rejected and try to build a relationship that isn't based on sex - and you're trying to defend your position by labeling anything else as pathetic."

Sometimes, Trowa forgot that Sally had been a psychologist, working as an Intelligence officer for the Alliance during the war before she went rogue.

"Have you ever considered that one of the reasons why so many of your relationships go up in flames is because you only date someone after you've had a drunken one-night stand with them?"

"Are you implying I'm a slut or-"

"I'm just suggesting that if you took the time to get to know someone, before you jump into bed with them, you might have a better idea of your compatibility."

"I knew Duo for years before we slept together," he pointed out.

"And you two were together for, what, six years? That's good. That's almost like proof that I'm right."

He glared at her.

"Plus, you knew me before we jumped into bed also. Hell, I've known you almost as long as you've known Duo. In fact, I've known you since before you were Jim Cocky."

"That never ceases to amuse you," he muttered, fighting his natural reaction to smirk at her mischievous grin.

"Hopefully not," she agreed.

The speaker system announced boarding for their flight.

Trowa had had to pull the offical Preventers business line out of his pocket to re-book their plane tickets - originally purchased separately, for separate flights.

He was able to get the agent to agree to two seats, together, but he wasn't at all surprised to find that the seats they had been assigned were sandwiched between a young couple and their child behind them and another young couple and their child in front of them. The agent hadn't been at all happy to have him ask to speak with her supervisor when she had initially balked at his request. And this, he was sure, was her way to pay him back for her irritation.

Sally merely smirked and took the window seat.

"This reminds me," she said as first one and then the other child started to cry, "are we on that 'get married and have kids' track, or are we doing the selfish childless couple thing so we can spend all of our savings travelling around the world until we die?"

"The latter," Trowa groaned as his seat was viciously kicked from behind. "Definitely the latter."

-o-

They landed in Poitiers a painful three hours later, after a too-short layover in Lyon and the horrifying realization that the families around them were also flying all the way to Poitiers.

The rental car waiting for them was a sleek, black Audi convertible that had Trowa whistling in appreciation.

Sally plucked the keys out of the service agents hand. She had insisted on doing their car reservation, and Trowa was very, very glad he hadn't offered up more than a token argument.

She slid into the cream leather seat and settled her sunglasses over her eyes before glancing over at him.

"Well? Ready to go show everyone how disgustingly in love we are?"

Trowa snorted in amusement, but helped the agent load their bags into the trunk and then slipped into the passenger seat.

He put his own sunglasses on and Sally threw the car into gear, tearing out of the lot at a speed that was well above posted limits.

"It's like you're trying to get pulled over," he muttered as he decided to take the precaution of fastening his seatbelt after Sally barely rolled to a stop at a posted sign before zipping down the road again.

She glanced over at him and smirked.

"Don't tell me you don't love getting to pull the 'I'm a Special Agent on Assignment' line out whenever local law enforcement messes with you."

"Sure, but that doesn't mean I mess with them ."

Sally just drove even faster.

A drive that should have taken them an hour and a half took barely an hour.

Of course, as they pulled up in front of La Villa Dolce and Sally finally slowed down, Trowa couldn't help but notice that her hair, previously pulled back into a braid at the nape of her neck, was now a windswept mess around her face.

She looked over at him and laughed.

"Your hair ."

He could well imagine, and he was afraid to look.

He shot her a grimace, and she reached over, making a half-hearted attempt to smooth it down.

"Huh. I didn't realize your hair was so fine."

Sally dropped her hand and looked away abruptly.

She steered the car to a stop in front of the valet.

They got out of the car in silence, Trowa wondering what had made Sally pull away so quickly while simultaneously trying not to let himself dwell too much on what it had felt like to have her fingers momentarily tangled in his hair.

She wrestled her bags out of his grip when he tried to carry all of them, and he rolled his eyes but allowed her to take them from him.

The lobby of the villa, a mansion that predated the Colonial period by several centuries, was decorated with charming, illustrated wall murals of a library and the facade of the mansion itself.

A few people sat at the small bar area off to one side, soft music floating towards where Trowa and Sally entered. Trowa made a mental note to pay the bar a visit before he and Sally left for the rehearsal dinner in a few hours.

Trowa walked up to the front desk, Sally at his side.

"Good afternoon," he was greeted by the desk clerk with a smile. The clerk's eyes flicked up to his hair, and then over to Sally's, confirming that they absolutely looked ridiculous.

"Good afternoon. We have reservations under the name of Barton."

The clerk typed away at a datapad.

"Ah, yes. The Room La Dolce. An excellent choice."

Trowa slid his credit card and government issued ID card across the desk to the clerk, who started to enter the information into the datapad for confirmation.

"Yes, we hope so," Sally said as she slid her arm through his and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Trowa was momentarily startled, but he forced himself to relax at the feel of her body against his own.

"Yes," he agreed.

The clerk smiled at them again, and then gestured towards a porter approaching them.

"Tomas will escort you to your room. If you need anything during your stay with us, please do not hesitate to ask." The clerk handed the cards back to Trowa, along with a small envelope containing their room keys - old-fashioned, metal keys that felt heavy in his hand.

"Thank you," Sally smiled at the clerk. She kept her arm looped through Trowa's but stood up straight, walking beside him and finally surrendering her bags to the porter.

Their suite turned out to be both a dream and a nightmare.

A dream, because the open terrace doors revealed the rooftop jacuzzi and a fantastic view of La Rochelle and the harbor; a nightmare because the room furnishings were a riot of color. Lime green, fuchsia, violet, and a grayish avocado were a near assault on Trowa's eyes.

"Oh my," was Sally's response, certainly audible to Tomas as he situated their bags in front of the bedroom closet.

"Yes, yes, the view is amazing, isn't it?" Tomas grinned.

"Um, yes. It's something." Sally looked up at Trowa with wide eyes.

He smirked down at her, and then tilted his head down to whisper in her ear.

"Don't tell me you don't like lime green and violet floral curtains?"

She snorted and stepped away from him, crossing the room and stepping out onto the terrace.

Trowa tipped the porter and saw him out of the room, locking the door behind him before he joined Sally on the terrace.

"You sure know how to treat a girl on a fake romantic weekend, Barton," Sally teased him.

He smirked.

"Just imagine if it was real."

She turned to face him, leaning one hip against the stone rail of the terrace and crossing her arms over her chest.

"You know… there's something we should probably work on before we take this show out in public."

He arched an eyebrow.

"What? Do you want to practice saying our pet names? Don't think I missed the section in the dossier where you changed mine to sweetheart ."

"You really think I would call anyone - even you - babe ?"

Hearing her say the word now, a fair amount of derision in her voice, Trowa had to admit that, no, he didn't think Sally was likely to call anyone babe.

"But you're fine with sweetheart?"

"Of course."

"Okay, go ahead - show me."

She rolled her eyes at him and huffed.

"Fine. Trowa, sweetheart, can you get another martini for me?"

He smirked.

"Of course, darling."

They both, he had to admit, could use a little work with their endearments.

Sally sighed and shook her head.

"That wasn't actually what I was referring to - although now I definitely think we need to work on that too."

"Agreed. What were you referring to?"

She sighed and looked, for perhaps the first time ever , nervous.

Trowa immediately felt on-edge himself. Sally Po, who charged into firefights with only a single bullet left in her own gun to save the ass of a rookie agent, never looked less than ready to kick ass.

"If we've been dating for six months and sleeping together for almost that long, casual touching needs to look… casual."

It was an excellent point. And while Trowa wasn't particularly enthusiastic about clinging to his lovers in public, it was entirely natural to touch them, to lean close to them and whisper teasing promises in their ear and, occasionally, kiss them.

Casual touching and kissing were miles apart, however, and Trowa berated himself for making that wholly unnecessary leap.

Then again, he and Duo had kissed in public - not often, and not with abandon, but certainly often enough for Quatre to have teased them about it. For Sally to tease them about it. For Wufei to get tight-lipped and look away.

"Casual touching," he said, forcing himself away from those thoughts.

Sally held out her hand, and he met it with his own, knitting their fingers together and appreciating her strong grip.

That felt fine - natural, even. They had sparred enough, had helped each other off the mats so frequently, that the feel of Sally's hand in his own was familiar.

He tugged her closer and then released her hand, lifting his to smooth over her arm and shoulder, tucking her against his side. Her arm went around his waist and they stood like that, looking over the city below them, for several minutes.

Sally was tall enough that, when she laid her head against his shoulder, it was incredibly easy, and again, natural, for Trowa to rest his cheek on the top of her head.

"This is good," she said.

It was .

It also made Trowa realize that it had been months since he had had more than a drunken, fumbling fuck; months since he had just touched someone else like this, had held someone as more than a prelude to sex.

Unwelcome as the realization was, it was nothing compared to Trowa's enjoyment of having Sally pressed against him like this.

Fake or not, she fit against him in a way that was very nearly torturous.

"How about a kiss?"

Sally's voice was low, the breeze almost carrying her words away from him.

Trowa's mouth went dry.

"A kiss?"

"Do I need to draw you a diagram?"

He had to smirk at her tone before he stepped away.

Her cheeks were flushed, likely from the cool afternoon air, and Trowa found himself staring at her lips, at the way she was biting into her lower lip.

Trowa was fairly certain this was a bad idea - very nearly positive that he should just say that they didn't need to kiss in public, that Sally was private as hell and certainly wouldn't engage in such blatant public affection as a kiss - but hell, bad ideas had never put him off before.

He ran his thumb over her cheek and across her jaw, tilted her head up, and she leaned into the touch, eyes still wide open as his lips met hers.

Kissing Duo had always felt like playing with matches - the immediate thrill and heat and knowledge that danger was lurking just there . Trowa had been able to lose himself in the sensation - to be engulfed by Duo's mouth, his embrace, his taste.

Sally…

Sally wasn't at all like fire.

She was like the ocean, powerful and sure and fresh , her lips somehow pliant but firm, slanting against his own, first following his lead and then changing the angle, the pressure, and Trowa felt a curl of desire unfold in his belly.

He had thought about kissing her, about sleeping with her - idle thoughts after sparring matches or long nights drinking together or three days of no sleep on a mission. But she had never seemed interested, never seemed attainable .

And, he had to remind himself, she still wasn't.

Sally Po, his friend, his comrade and his colleague, his fake-girlfriend, was kissing him right now because she wanted to perfect their cover.

Nothing more.

Trowa eased away from the contact, felt the drag of Sally's lips against his own, across the corner of his mouth and his jaw as he pulled away too quickly for her to adjust.

He just barely resisted the urge to trace over the path with his fingers, to see if he could feel the residual heat of her on his flesh.

"That was fine," he decided.

She nodded, her eyes dark and unreadable.

"It was," she agreed.

Sally smoothed a hand through her hair, grimacing as she realized just how much had escaped her braid.

"I must look like a mess."

Trowa shrugged.

"I hadn't noticed."

She gave him a dark look, the teasing remark falling very short.

"I'm not at all surprised," she muttered.

She looked at her watch.

"We should probably leave in an hour. I'm going to get cleaned up. I'll meet you in the hotel bar?"

She didn't even wait for a response, turning on her heel and leaving Trowa to stare after her as she stormed back into the hotel room.

He watched her angrily search through her bag, pull out a toiletry kit, and then disappear into the bathroom with a slammed door.

What the hell?


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: For Ro, who is amazing in all the ways

A/N2: For the GWBlock Party on Tumblr's end of summer trope fest. I decided to do some fake dating.

A/N3: Badass, Preventers Hilde is totally inspired by Kangofu-CB's amazing fic, Mission: Redacted. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and go devour it. This will still be waiting when you get back.

A/N4: Eternal thanks to Ro for support and for beta reading

A/N5: Also a huge thanks to Kango-CB, who babysat and cheerled me through writing the things and seriously, thank you.

A/N6: Title from the song by Sylvan Esso

Warnings: language, smut, slight violence

Pairings: 3xS, others - I'm not giving it away yet sorry if that's going to bother you

Just Dancing

The hotel bar, despite - or perhaps because of its small size - was surprisingly well-stocked.

Trowa ordered a martini and wondered just how many ways today would continue to go wrong.

He had used the full-length antique mirror in the bedroom to attempt to put his hair to rights, with only minimal success, before changing into the gray trousers and dress shirt.

Wufei had emailed him, had said the rehearsal dinner would be fairly casual. But Wufei's definition of 'fairly casual' was more in line with Quatre'sidea of casual than it was with either Trowa or Duo's. He could only hope he wasn't horribly over-dressed.

Sally had stepped out of the bathroom just as Trowa was rolling up the sleeves on his shirt, and he had looked over to see her swathed in towels - one around her torso and another around her hair.

She had looked him over, and Trowa had arched an eyebrow.

"You look good," she concluded.

"Thanks." He looked her over, and debated whether or not to offer a comment on her current attire. If this had been in any other circumstances than their current ones, he would have. As it was, he chose to keep his thoughts to himself.

"I'll be down in the bar," he informed her.

She nodded.

"I won't be much longer."

"We've got time."

"Time that we need to use going over our cover," she pointed out.

Trowa thought about how well that had just gone.

He gave her a look.

"I think we've already figured out how to have a realistic-looking fight. What else did you want to practice?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"You could do with some work on your apologies," she suggested.

All things considered - that last night with Duo, when he had confronted Trowa about Moten and Trowa had tried to write it off, had said it meant nothing, and Duo had snarled that he really fucking sucked at apologies - she wasn't at all wrong.

Still, in this situation, he wasn't even sure what he should be apologizing for .

So, he decided to make his escape, leaving her to finish getting dressed and planting himself in the bar.

Giving him plenty of time to mull over what else would be in store for him tonight.

The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant in town, just a short walk from their hotel, and Trowa was already dreading it. Had, in fact, been dreading it ever since he had said he would go.

He wasn't entirely sure who had been invited to the rehearsal dinner - he wasn't even sure why he had been invited, considering that he wasn't in the wedding party, and he certainly couldn't count himself as a close friend anymore, after what he had done. Hilde, Trowa was confident, would be Duo's… Maid of Honor. He had no idea who would stand with Wufei. The man's closest friend was…

Sally .

She hadn't said anything, but Trowa couldn't imagine who else it could be.

He was finishing his second martini when Sally walked into the bar.

Trowa wasn't the only one who looked at her, and he could certainly understand how she had drawn so much attention by just walking into the room.

Her legs, from the ankles of her flat sandals all the way up to mid-thigh, were completely exposed by the dress she was wearing.

Trowa had to assume it was a dress. It looked like a violet men's dress-shirt, cinched at the waist with a thin black belt. She had left the top few buttons undone, exposing a thin sliver of golden skin that drew Trowa's gaze up to her face.

Her blue eyes were rimmed in dark brown, her lids smudged with a faint, coppery glimmer that made her blue eyes seem even larger, more vivid and luminous than they normally were. Her hair was loose, falling around her shoulders in golden waves.

She approached him, lips curving into a smirk at his continued attention.

He stood as she neared.

"Darling." He held a hand against her back as she maneuvered onto a barstool.

Her lips twitched in amusement.

"What is the lady having this evening?" The bartender walked over, smile casual and practiced.

Sally glanced at Trowa's drink, and he held it out to her.

She took a considering sip.

"Mm. I'll have the same, but instead of the Plymouth, I'd like Gin Mare."

The bartender nodded, and Sally gave Trowa his drink back.

"You're the one who convinced me to stop drinking Tanqueray and use Plymouth for martinis in the first place," he had to say.

She shrugged.

"And it is undeniably better. But this bar carries Gin Mare and I've always liked it. So, figured out how you want to apologize yet?"

He still hadn't quite figured out what to apologize for .

"I'm sorry." He meant it - he was .

Sally didn't push him to expand on that, and he was grateful.

Instead, she accepted her martini from the bartender and raised it to her lips in a salute that was almost not mocking.

"See? You sound just like a man who's been in a relationship for six months."

He rolled his eyes and tossed back the last of his drink. He waved away the bartender's move to bring him another.

Sally shifted, moving to face him and tangling one of her legs with his.

He arched an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged.

"It's something I do. Something Wufei and Duo have seen me do."

Which meant… Sally's private life wasn't as legendarily private as he had always assumed. It was just kept private from him , and work functions.

Sally had added her own relationship history to the dossier, filling in the section of question marks that Trowa had initially put down. It wasn't nearly as varied or detailed as his own. She had been as succinct as if she was writing a mission debrief.

Of the six relationships she had listed since the end of the Eve Wars, Trowa had been surprised to discover that three of them were with other Preventers agents. The other three had been civilians - one a diplomat from L4, one an economics professor at a Parisian university, and one a school teacher in Brussels.

The relationships had varied in length - the shortest, with the school teacher, had lasted only four months, while the longest, with a Preventers agent assigned to Intelligence, had lasted almost three years.

Trowa abruptly realized that that same agent, Nicol Campbell, had been one of Duo's friends. Had, in fact, come over to the cookouts Duo used to organize at the park closest to HQ. Cookouts that Sally had also attended. Trowa scanned his memory, but he couldn't think of a single moment shared between the two that hadn't simply seemed like two co-workers relaxing together.

"Why did you never introduce me to your boyfriends?"

She snorted, mid-sip, and then coughed.

She set her drink down and gave him a hard look.

"Are you serious?"

"I thought you didn't want any of us to meet them. I didn't realize it was just me ."

"Trowa, I did introduce you to one of my boyfriends, once."

He had absolutely no recollection of Sally introducing him to any of those six men.

She rolled her eyes.

"You don't remember us going out to celebrate Cocky's death and the return of Trowa Barton?"

He did remember that . Une hadn't yet sent Trowa to guilt Duo into joining the Preventers, and Wufei had been away on assignment - and besides, hadn't known who Jim O'Cochran was or even that Trowa was an active agent. So Sally had taken Trowa out drinking, his first legal drink she had joked as he passed his new, military issue official ID over for inspection.

There had been a few other agents at the bar that night, the proximity to HQ making it a quick favorite within the fledgling agency.

Including, now that Trowa thought about it, Diego Constance. The first man on her list.

"I introduced you two, he got flirty with me, and you snapped at him that if I had any interest in dating a fellow agent there were far superior ones to choose from?"

Trowa flushed.

Diego had been all smirks and charm, casually running his fingertips over Sally's shoulders and teasing at her hair, and Trowa… Trowa hadn't put two and two together when Sally slapped at his hand and told him to behave.

"I didn't realize," he muttered, feeling like a complete idiot.

Sally's eyes narrowed as she considered him, but then she sighed.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Barton. You were a kid who had almost no experience with human interaction outside of war. It's not a big deal."

He arched an eyebrow at her.

"A big enough deal that you never told me you dated any of these guys."

"Well, even back then you were a little intimidating, Barton. Diego and I ended things a week? Two weeks after that."

Another thing to feel guilty about.

Sally shoved him none-too-gently.

"Get over yourself. Diego was okay, but if he was going to let some scrawny kid scare him, he isn't exactly the kind of guy I want to spend the rest of my life with. We had other problems."

"I wasn't scrawny."

"Yes, you were. You were doing your whole post-war depression diet thing where you just subsisted on toast, coffee and scrounged MREs. Une and I were this close to getting you into a program."

He hadn't known that either.

Duo had often accused Trowa of being a little self-centered, a little oblivious to the world around him unless he was directly invested in something.

"Don't worry," Sally gave his shoulder a sympathetic pat and then ran her hand down to his bicep, giving it a firm squeeze. "No one thinks you're scrawny anymore."

Trowa dug out enough money to cover their drinks and stood up.

"We should probably head to the restaurant."

Sally rose as well, smoothing her dress down and holding out her hand.

He looked down at it.

"We practiced this," she reminded him.

With a sigh, he slid his hand into hers.

"I don't understand how you thought I was the kind of person who doesn't like to hold hands with my boyfriend," she muttered as they walked out of the hotel.

She was right. Now that Trowa knew Sally had simply avoided bringing her boyfriends around him , and not kept her relationships completely private, it made sense that Sally was affectionate.

Open, blunt, and uncaring of what others thought of her.

She was exactly the type of person to not only hold hands in public but to lean against him, to whisper things into his ear as they leisurally strolled down the cobbled street towards the restaurant, so close that her lips seared his skin.

The kind of person who would tilt her face up to him for a kiss, with no thought to anyone watching them, just because he made a corny joke about the sailors in the harbor.

A smile was still curving her lips, her eyes dancing in the warm streetlights, the gentle lapping of the waves in the harbor and the moonlight dancing along the water the perfect recipe for disaster.

"Quatre's across the street - he just recognized us," Sally said, her voice low enough to sound like an intimacy.

Trowa didn't bother looking to confirm - he trusted Sally's instincts and observations implicitly.

He leaned down, brushing his lips over hers and pulling her close, fitting her body against his and tangling his hand in the soft fabric of her dress.

When he pulled away, he looked across the street and caught sight of Quatre, his friend's jaw making a good effort to touch his feet. Trowa wanted to laugh.

But then Sally brushed over his mouth with her thumb.

"Lipstick," she explained.

He gave the digit a teasing nip. It was something he had done to Duo. Something Quatre had seen. Something Sally had seen.

Her eyes crinkled, and she gave him a small smile.

Her hand slipped down to find his again.

"Are you ready?"

He wasn't. Not at all.

Not even with the martinis making the world pleasantly soft and the press of Sally's mouth still fresh against his own.

He would never be ready to watch his ex-lover and his best friend realize that all they had ever needed to be happy was a life without him .

-o-

Wufei's greeting was enthusiastic, the smile on his face relaxed, broad, genuine . He looked relieved that Trowa had shown up, and he pulled Trowa into a hug that had Trowa immediately tensing, immediately looking for Duo.

Duo and Sally were hugging. Grinning at each other. Two friends ready to celebrate a momentous occasion.

And then Duo turned his face just enough to see Trowa, still in Wufei's arms.

His grin tightened, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders stiffened.

Duo was definitely not relieved that Trowa had decided to show up.

Wufei pulled away, his hands lingering to squeeze Trowa's shoulders.

"Thank you for being here."

Trowa tried to swallow around the lump in his throat, around his guilt and pain.

He managed to nod to Wufei before the man stepped away to embrace Sally.

Duo took two steps towards Trowa, and then hesitated.

"You sent me an invitation," Trowa said in a low voice.

Duo snorted.

" Wufei sent you an invitation."

That hurt. The words and the expression on Duo's face.

"Do you want me to leave?"

Duo groaned and crossed his arms. Almost immediately, he dropped them back down to his sides.

"No. Of course not. Wufei would be- No. It's easier if you stay. Just…" Duo sighed, and the look he gave Trowa was raw and vulnerable.

Three years ago, that look would have had Trowa reaching out for Duo, grabbing his hand and dragging him somewhere private, somewhere just for the two of them, somewhere where nothing and no one else mattered.

But this was now , and Trowa was the cause, not the solution, for that look.

"I'm sorry."

Duo swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing several times, but then he nodded and moved away, grinning again as he opened his arms to Quatre.

Sally rejoined Trowa, arching an eyebrow at him in silent question.

"I need to drink more," he muttered.

She took his hand again, giving him a sympathetic squeeze that he absolutely didn't deserve.

"Trowa... Sally !"

Relena had spotted them, her gaze taking in their joined hands and the lack of space between them.

She smirked, looking like a cat who had gotten the proverbial cream.

"And just how long has this been going on?"

"A few months," Sally shrugged.

"Uh huh. So that's why you shot down my brother when you were in New York six weeks ago?"

"It was one of many reasons, yes," Sally muttered with a roll of her eyes.

"Too bad it wasn't the only one." Relena's smirk grew as she looked at Trowa. "I'm sure my brother would have been more than happy to share."

That insinuation had Sally barking out a startled laugh and Trowa wishing he could just die .

He had always wondered, had always been afraid , that Relena and Zechs had compared notes on their respective flings with him. Heero had teased Trowa mercilessly for years about it, stopping only when he had married Relena and Trowa had pointed out that Heero had slept with Trowa after Trowa had slept with Zechs. Heero hadn't liked the implication at all , and had never mentioned any of the incidents again.

There was, however, no shaming Relena.

She hooked her arm through Sally's open one, pulling her away from Trowa and towards the restaurant bar, the look in her eyes making it clear that she wanted - and would get - all of the intimate details of their relationship.

Trowa was alone for all of thirty seconds before Heero joined him, pressing a gin and tonic into his hand before sipping from his own.

"Thank you," Trowa sighed in relief.

Heero nodded and, standing on the periphery beside Trowa, scanned the room full of their friends and colleagues.

It looked as if Duo and Wufei had rented out the entire restaurant. Trowa recognized many of the people, but the ones he didn't recognize seemed to mostly speak French, and he assumed they were locals that Wufei and Duo had grown close to over the last half-year.

He wasn't surprised that Une wasn't there, and he doubted that she had recieved an invitation. Not after everything.

"Duo didn't know whether or not he could invite Cathy," Heero said to him.

Trowa turned his head to look at Heero.

He knew. Trowa had told him, two days after Duo moved out and when he realized that Duo absolutely meant it when he told Trowa to stay the fuck away from him. He had gone to Heero, had thought - had almost hoped - that Heero would beat the shit out of him.

He hadn't. He had, instead, fixed Trowa a drink, sat him down on the couch in his studio apartment, and insisted Trowa tell him everything.

Heero had agreed that Trowa was an idiot, an asshole, and probably a lost cause. But he hadn't hit him. And he hadn't turned his back on him.

Trowa sighed.

"She's happy for them. She always liked Wufei." And she had adored Duo, after working through her phase of disliking him because of the war, because Duo had been the one to remind Trowa who he was. "She said she was going to send them a gift."

They sipped from their drinks in silence for several minutes.

"You and Sally?"

Trowa shrugged.

"Yeah."

"Does she know, what happened with Duo?"

Trowa sighed.

"Yeah. She does."

Heero nodded.

"Good."

Because Trowa really wanted yet another person to know exactly what a piece of shit he was.

He sighed and took a rather large, burning gulp of his drink.

"Relena and I are staying at the farmhouse."

Trowa wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but he had learned to let Heero meander his way through conversations.

"He misses you."

Trowa snorted derisively.

"Not- He misses you as a friend. He's happy with Wufei. They fit. They work ."

Trowa knew.

He had had two years of watching them together, as partners and lovers, before they had left Preventers.

"I'm glad he's happy," Trowa said. He couldn't think of what else to say. And at least he meant this. As much as he hated that Duo and Wufei were getting married tomorrow, that Duo was welding the already firmly-shut door of their relationship closed, he wanted Duo to be happy.

Still, as Duo and Wufei stood side by side, as Wufei slipped an arm around Duo's waist and pulled him close to plant a kiss on his forehead, Trowa wished he didn't have to see it. Didn't have to celebrate it.

Quatre wandered over, hugging first Heero and then Trowa, his hands lingering as he pulled away, his eyes searching.

"You look well," Quatre decided.

They hadn't seen each other in months, not since Trowa had been sent to L4 to liaise with the local branch of Preventers after a riot, and they had gone out for lunch together. It had been just after Trowa had received the wedding invitation, and Quatre had been so anxious for him, so caring , that Trowa had almost confessed the whole sordid affair that had ruined his life.

"Thank you. So do you."

Quatre smirked and shrugged. He had grown a beard, last year - keeping it trimmed short, but it sculpted his face, cutting through the boyishly round cheeks and making him look more like the boardroom powerhouse that he really was.

"Sally looks well, too," Quatre continued.

Trowa rolled his eyes. At least Heero had been blunt.

"She does," he agreed, looking over to the bar where she and Relena were laughing and gesturing - two-handed gestures that Trowa forced himself to not try to contextualize.

"They're dating," Heero said with a sigh, cutting through what might have been twenty minutes of Quatre trying to unobtrusively find out what their relationship was.

"Oh? It's not just kissing on the street, then? It's more serious than that?" Quatre teased both Trowa and Heero.

Heero gave Trowa a look, and despite himself, Trowa felt heat creep over his cheeks.

"No, it's not just kissing on the street. We kiss indoors, too."

Heero smirked, and Quatre, derailed, offered up an indignant huff.

"Since when?"

Trowa shrugged.

They had set a date - two weeks after the bogus mission in Alaska.

"Six, almost seven, months ago."

Trowa could see Quatre trying to piece that information together. Heero's speculative look, however, was far more concerning.

"Before you went to the Lunar Station to do training?"

Shit .

That had been five months ago, and Zechs had breezed through the Preventers station looking like a romantic hero and smirking at the sighs and longing glances his mere presence elicited. He and Trowa had gone out for drinks one night, had ended up in Zechs's hotel room, and Trowa had been very late for work the next day.

And he had been stupid enough to tell Heero about it.

"Not exclusively - not at the start," he scrambled to say.

Heero was starting to scowl, though.

Shit, shit, shit .

"It was after that," he sighed. "After, I got back, told her everything ," he stressed the word, which made Quatre look confused and seemed to put Heero fractionally at ease, "and we decided to give our relationship a chance."

Heero looked over at the bar, eyes taking in both his wife and Trowa's supposed girlfriend.

"Good. She'll probably kill you if you fuck up. She's not like Duo."

The words gave Trowa pause.

Because Heero was right.

Sally wasn't like Duo. In some ways, she was - ways like throwing themselves into a fight because it was the right thing to do and having no concern for their own personal safely, ways like having a sassy comeback for damn near everything, and ways like calling Trowa on his shit. But in other ways, they weren't alike. Duo ran from conflict in his personal life - he always had, and Trowa had always let him. Sally, Trowa was pretty sure, would take on any romantic struggles the same way as she did everything else - openly, and committing completely.

Trowa realized that Wufei was the same, in that regard. He didn't let Duo take off when they fought, didn't wait days for him to drag himself back and work things out. Wufei went after Duo, Wufei made Duo face down his demons, and he did so while standing at his side.

Trowa… Trowa hadn't.

Trowa had been just as ready to run at any sign of the end as Duo had been. In some ways, they had both always had one foot out of the door, just waiting for the match to be struck before they took off.

It was a sobering and depressing realization.

"I'm sure I don't even want to know," Quatre muttered.

Trowa sighed. He should have told Quatre. Should have told him years ago. But now was absolutely not the time.

"You don't," he simply agreed instead.

The clinking of cutlery on glass drew his attention.

Howard was, for the first time Trowa had ever seen him, not wearing a Hawaiian print shirt.

Instead, the gray haired man was wearing a suit . A cream linen suit and a pink dress shirt.

It was surreal.

"Alright, alright. Apparently, everyone is here, and everyone's already well on their way to getting hammered, so we should probably start this thing." He waved his hands. "So go find a seat, get settled in, and we can all get gooey and whatever about these two punks falling in love."

There were some laughs from the guests as people moved to take their seats.

Quatre gave his arm a squeeze and moved away, joining a dark haired woman at a table in the middle of the room and kissing her cheek.

She was new.

"Zorya. She works with Relena."

Trowa arched an eyebrow at Heero, who shrugged.

"She thinks they'll hit it off. They've been seeing each other off and on for three months."

Relena and Sally walked over, Relena smirking still as she linked her hand with Heero's and they walked away to their table.

Sally, on the other hand, looked a little shell-shocked.

"Are you okay?"

"I knew you had a reputation, Barton, but Jesus. I didn't realize you were an actual sex god."

Trowa had to smirk as he put a hand against the small of her back and steered them towards a pair of open seats at a table near the back of the room. As far from Duo and Wufei as they could get.

"How much of what I just heard was true, and how much did she exaggerate?"

Trowa shrugged and wisely decided not to hold out Sally's chair for her, instead sitting down in his own while she arranged herself.

"Relena? Probably not much. She's… very adventurous. And surprisingly bendy."

"That is the Vice Foreign Minister you're talking about."

Trowa smirked.

"She wasn't at the time. Which is a shame, because her desk now is about three times bigger than the one she had then, and if I had been able to-"

" Barton ."

He smirked at her outrage and the flush on her cheeks.

"You said yourself, I'm not the scrawny kid I used to be."

"I am well aware. I didn't exactly need a dissertation on the subject on your sexual prowess to get that."

He wondered just what Relena had said, wondered just which of the half-dozen hookups she had told Sally about, but his rather pleasant musings were cut short when Howard started to speak again.

"Okay, so, these two kids - they're the closest thing I'll ever have to family, and since this thing is traditionally put on by the parents, they let me host. Which means you can all drink up on my dime - and it also means you're going to have to indulge me while I talk about my two boys."

Howard had always liked Duo, and whenever Duo and Trowa had met up with him, the man's affection for Duo had been obvious. Trowa hadn't realized he felt the same way about Wufei, but then, anyone that Duo loved, anyone that he decided to spend the rest of his life with, Howard was likely to care for as well.

Howard started to tell stories about both Duo and Wufei. The Duo stories were among Trowa's favorites - Duo sneaking about a Sweeper ship and having the audacity to complain about the food; Duo helping Howard set up the Lunar chop-shop after the war and inadvertently starting a turf war with two local gangs. Trowa hadn't heard the Wufei stories before, and he knew, as soon as Howard started in on them, that it was because they had happened after Trowa had fucked everything up.

The stories had everyone, except for Trowa, laughing, smiling and toasting the two red-faced men sitting together at the front of the room.

Trowa could only stare at them, could only feel the three drinks he had had settle in his stomach, could feel all of his mistakes building up, trying to choke him.

They looked so happy. They looked perfect together, and Trowa-

"Hey."

Sally leaned close, hand resting on the fist he had clenched against his thigh under the table.

He looked over at her. She was concerned, her eyes wide and her brow furrowed, and she cared . And he absolutely didn't deserve it.

"I'm going to get another drink. Can I get you something?"

She frowned slightly, but shrugged one shoulder.

"I'll have whatever you're having."

Trowa rose from the table, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, and made his way over to the bar.

He ordered two gin and tonics, asking for the Mare Gin when he saw it on the shelf.

By the time he sat back down at their table and pressed Sally's glass into her hand, Howard had stopped waxing poetic and Hilde was standing up, holding a glass in one hand and regaling the guests with embarrassing stories of her own about the couple.

It went like that for another ten minutes, Hilde sharing stories designed to embarrass both Duo and Wufei while entertaining everyone else, and Trowa steadily emptying his drink and wishing he could just walk out.

What the hell had made him think it was a good idea to come to this in the first place?

He never should have said yes when he received the invitation. He sure as hell shouldn't have assumed that Duo wanted him there.

"Okay, now that we all need to wash our eyes out with soap, let's let Sally Po, Wufei's Best… Woman, say a few words."

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Trowa had been so entrenched in his own spiral of self-loathing that he hadn't even considered the fact that Sally would probably be called on to speak.

Or that everyone would turn to look at them.

Duo's face was pinched again, and Trowa could imagine that the fingers he had laced with Wufei's on their table had tightened considerably as Duo looked at him.

Sally stood up, one hand on Trowa's shoulder as she got up from her chair.

He expected her to move away, but instead she positioned herself almost directly behind him, leaving her hand in place.

"Thanks, Howard. I'm afraid most of my stories about Duo and Wufei are classified." There were a few laughs, mostly from the Preventers agents - current and former - spread throughout the room. "But there's one story I want to share. Wufei swore me to secrecy, when this happened, but I asked him for permission to share this, and after promising not to make him sound like too much of an idiot, he gave in." More laughs, and Trowa could feel his own tension build.

He didn't want to know. He really, really didn't-

"Duo and Wufei had only been together for a few months when Valentine's Day rolled around."

He couldn't sit here and listen to this.

But everyone was looking at them - looking at Sally , who still had her hand on his shoulder. He didn't know if she was offering comfort or restraining him. At the moment, it didn't really matter.

He stared at his nearly empty drink, but he didn't make a move to pick it up. Not with everyone looking.

He forced himself to draw in a deep breath, reminded himself that he had stood in front of entire enemy armies and pretended not to care that he could die at any second. He could sit here, in a restaurant and surrounded by his friends, and listen to Sally tell some ridiculous, romantic story about Duo and Wufei.

"Wufei isn't big on holidays - any holidays, but he especially hates anything that's been commercialized. Like Valentine's Day. But, one day in the breakroom, he thought he overheard Duo telling a mutual friend that he liked Valentine's Day. He thought he heard Duo tell this friend that he liked boxed chocolate and roses and grand romantic gestures."

Trowa, having known Duo for almost half their lives, knew that none of that was true. Duo hated holidays almost as much as Wufei did - and he vehemently hated Valentine's Day. The one year that Trowa had suggested they go out for dinner to mark the date, Duo had suggested that Trowa go have dinner by himself because he wasn't about to parade around and buy into the 'love makes you happy' bullshit that the holiday symbolized. He also knew that Duo didn't care for chocolate and was, in fact, allergic to roses.

"Let me just say, for the record, that Duo was not telling the mutual friend any of that. Duo was telling the friend that he planned on confiscating all of the boxed chocolates and roses from the recruits who were dumb enough to bring them into the office, and that he was looking forward to throwing them in a dumpster and setting them on fire. That is the only thing Duo enjoys about Valentine's Day."

Trowa had helped Duo confiscate the loot one year, had stood with him in the freezing wind while all of the red, white and pink paper hearts went up in flames and Duo stared at the fire expressionlessly.

More laughs from the crowd.

Duo looked right at Trowa, and he wondered if Duo was remembering that same time, wondered if he was remembering that they went back to Trowa's office afterwards and fucked on the floor before lying there side by side and looking up at the ceiling tiles. Duo had told Trowa about his first time, then, had pushed away Trowa's hand when he reached for him. Trowa had told Duo about his own first time, far more pleasant than Duo's, and there hadn't been much else to say after that.

He wondered if Duo had told Wufei that story. Wondered if Wufei had known how to react, had known what to do.

"So, Wufei overheard this conversation and rushes to the gym to ask for my advice. Of course. Because I'm a girl ," Sally said in an imitation of Wufei's most clipped and impatient tone. It was a fair impression, and people laughed again. "I told him I was pretty sure Duo didn't like Valentine's Day at all , but he insisted that Duo loved it, and he begged for my help in setting up a grand romantic gesture for Duo. So, that night, we broke into Duo's office - your security code was really cute, by the way - and filled his office with red roses, dozens of them, and petals all over his desk. And Wufei managed to find a giant box of chocolates in the shape of a heart that he put in Duo's chair. We even put up heart-shaped streamers and blew up thirty- five heart-shaped balloons. And then we left it for Duo to find the next day."

Trowa realized he knew this story at the same moment that a lot of other people in the room realized they knew it too. Except, none of them had ever heard that part before. They only knew what happened next.

"So, Valentine's Day morning. Duo comes in, already in a foul mood for all of the reasons, and he opens his office to find Wufei's grand romantic gesture. And he shouts at the top of his lungs ' Who the fuck did this shit? I'm going to murder you, asshole .' Everyone on the floor heard him."

Trowa had actually stopped working, had reacted immediately to Duo's outrage and rushed from his office to find out what had happened. He, along with a half-dozen other agents, had crowded into the door of Duo's office to survey the damage.

Duo had stalked around this office, shoving balloons aside and swiping rose petals from his desk before turning to glare at everyone. He had sat down in his chair, muttering about pulling up security vids, and then frozen as his ass came in contact with the box of chocolates.

"Anyway," Sally concluded, "Wufei and I agreed not to tell Duo that we were the culprits. And, over the years, Wufei has gotten much better with his grand romantic gestures. And realized he shouldn't ask me for advice - except when he bought the farmhouse. You're welcome, by the way, Duo."

Duo turned to Wufei.

"I can't believe you did that," he muttered, his voice just barely loud enough to carry across the room.

Almost everyone laughed.

Wufei's cheeks were pink, and he sighed and looked on the verge of defending himself and his foolish actions.

"Thank you." Duo leaned over and kissed Wufei, lips curled into a satisfied smirk as they pressed against Wufei's.

It was a long, lingering kiss that had the guests cheering, had a few agents catcalling them, and had Trowa feeling nauseous.

He had somehow managed to avoid ever actually seeing them kiss before now.

Sally sat back down, her hand shifting from Trowa's shoulder down to his wrist.

"Okay?" she asked him in a low voice.

Trowa nodded dully.

He was absolutely not okay, and it was clear Sally knew he was lying.

She gripped his hand with her own, and Trowa couldn't bring himself to pull away from her.

Finally, Duo and Wufei ended the kiss.

Wufei was looking a little shell-shocked, even as Duo grinned at him, and Trowa was fairly confident he had never seen either man look happier.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: For Ro, who is amazing in all the ways

A/N2: For the GWBlock Party on Tumblr's end of summer trope fest. I decided to do some fake dating.

A/N3: Badass, Preventers Hilde is totally inspired by Kangofu-CB's amazing fic, Mission: Redacted. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and go devour it. This will still be waiting when you get back.

A/N4: Eternal thanks to Ro for support and for beta reading

A/N5: Also a huge thanks to Kango-CB, who babysat and cheerled me through writing the things and seriously, thank you.

A/N6: Title from the song by Sylvan Esso

Warnings: language, smut, slight violence

Pairings: 3xS, others - I'm not giving it away yet sorry if that's going to bother you

 _Just Dancing_

The rehearsal dinner dragged on for another two hours, with almost everyone sharing embarrassing stories about the happy couple, the stories themselves growing more and more inappropriate as the night wore on and the tip jar at the bar started to overflow.

Thankfully, none of the stories hit Trowa quite as hard as Sally's had, likely because Duo and Wufei's reactions hadn't been anything like that again.

He cut himself off, after his third gin and tonic, because he realized that, as much as he _wanted_ to just drink himself into oblivion, he was drinking himself into even more depression.

He was still drunk, though, when guests started to leave.

He was still drunk when Wufei and Duo walked by their table, when Duo hugged Sally and told her that hearing that Wufei had been behind the Valentine's Day Explosion was the best gift he had ever received, and he was still drunk when Wufei pulled him into a hug and thanked him once again for coming.

And he was definitely still drunk when Duo looked at him, eyes haunted and mouth a pale, hard line.

Duo and Wufei walked away, and Sally dragged Trowa out of the restaurant, her arm around his waist keeping him steady on the walk back to their hotel.

The cold air and the memory of Duo's face did a lot to steer him away from feeling drunk.

She didn't make him talk until they were back in the room, until she had locked the door and Trowa had removed his shoes with a stumbling kick and sat down on the couch.

"Trowa, I'm sorry."

He looked up at her.

"What the hell are you sorry for?"

She sighed and stepped out of her own shoes, far more balanced and sober than _he_ was. She sat down beside him on the couch.

"I'm sorry that this is so painful for you."

"Yeah, well, that's _my_ fault and no one else's."

Sally's lips thinned, reminding Trowa of the expression on Duo's face before he walked away.

"You fucked up," she agreed. "But-"

"There's no _but_ , Sally," Trowa growled. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the roots slightly, the pain doing very little to ground him. "I fucked his _rookie_ while he was on an undercover op! Duo was gone for thirteen months, risking his life every _minute,_ and I- I fucked his recruit because I was, what? Lonely? Bored? I don't even _like_ Morten."

"No one likes him," Sally muttered darkly.

"I took the _one_ good thing I found after the war and I pissed all over it. I threw it away, and that's on me. It sure as hell wasn't Duo's fault."

"Why did you sleep with him?"

Sally's voice was low, her eyes dark in the low light cast by the single lamp they had left on earlier in the evening.

Trowa swallowed hard and looked away from her.

"It wasn't because you were lonely or bored, Trowa."

The _next_ time he needed to find a fake date for something, Trowa would absolutely _not_ put former Alliance Intelligence officers on his list of candidates. No matter how sassy or gorgeous they were.

"Talk to me."

"Why?" Trowa sighed. "Why can't you just accept that I'm a piece of shit and-"

"Because you aren't a piece of shit. Because I've known you for almost twelve years, Trowa, and I've worked dozens of ops with you. You aren't a piece of shit, and I _care_ about you."

"That's because you didn't know-"

"You told me about it before I agreed to all of this, Trowa," she reminded him.

"Then why did you agree?"

He had wondered, but he sure as hell hadn't wanted to ask and risk Sally deciding that agreeing to be his fake date was, in fact, a _really_ bad idea.

"I already said that I care about you."

He snorted.

"You care about everyone. You care too _much_ about everyone." He thought back to her latest mission, to the single paragraph in her debrief that detailed the fate of the civilian who had stepped into the gunfight, who had been taken to the nearest hospital but even so had had to have his arm amputated.

"Are you trying to pick a fight with me?"

He considered it, testing the idea out in his mind. Sally didn't pull her punches, ever, and Trowa had been raised to always fight like his life was on the line. Sparring in the training room at HQ was one thing; opening himself up to Sally's insights and cutting remarks was entirely another.

He sighed and shook his head.

"Smart." She reached for his hand, and the smooth strength of her fingers around his wrist felt too damn good.

"I knew this would be tough for you. Even before you told me all of that - I knew this would be hard." She shrugged. "I thought you could use the backup."

He had no idea what he would have done _without_ her beside him at the rehearsal dinner, without the comforting weight of her hand on his shoulder. He couldn't even begin to imagine what tomorrow would be like.

"Thank you."

"You could thank me by _talking_ to me about it," she suggested.

He gave her a look.

"I'm verbally repressed, remember?"

"You're not a piece of shit," she repeated her earlier assertion. "So tell me what happened."

His tongue felt thick and awkward in his mouth as he tried to swallow.

"I told Duo I loved him, before he went on the mission. It… it was the first time I said it back to him."

Sally looked at him, silent and waiting for him to continue.

"I- I got scared," he admitted in a raw whisper, hating himself no less for finally saying it out loud. "I thought he wouldn't come back, I thought he would- He's the only one who ever meant anything, Sally. All the rest- It was just sex. Just… physical release."

"The way Relena tells it, it was more like some kind of religious experience," Sally muttered.

Trowa gave her a look.

"Sorry. Go on."

"He mattered and he was gone, and I was fucking _stupid_ and Moten was always _there,_ and it was… it was _easy_. It was never easy with Duo. We were always one step away from blowing up at each other, and Moten… It was easy, and I felt like I could breathe again. And then Duo came back and I didn't tell him. For weeks, I had this thing festering inside of me because I _knew_ it would ruin everything - I _knew_ Duo wouldn't be able to forgive me. So I lied to him until Moten opened his mouth and… and that was it."

"Duo-"

"Duo couldn't even look at me, Sally," Trowa sneered, disgusted with himself all over again as he remembered that night. "He came home and he packed his bag, and he- he told me he'd always known I would screw him over again, and that all I had ever been good for was fucking anyway."

" _Trowa_."

Sally knew a lot about the war, about what each of them had done - things that no one else knew, not even Une. _Especially_ not Une.

Trowa had closed down a bar more than once with Sally, trading horror stories and crushing beer nuts to dust as they confessed their sins. She knew what he had done.

He forced himself to shrug, and he freed his hand from her grip.

"Anyway, he was right. I screwed him over. And hey, you should know - after listening to Relena - that fucking is all I'm good at. But at least I'm good at that." He offered her a bitter twist of his lips.

"You're good for more than just fucking, Trowa."

"You're only saying that because you've never tried dating me," he muttered, and then he sighed. "Why is that? What did I- You were never interested in me."

"For fuck's sake, I thought you had sobered up," Sally muttered.

She rose from the couch and crossed the room. He watched her disappear into the bathroom, listened to the water run in the sink, and a moment later she came back in the room holding a cup.

"Drink this."

He took the cup gingerly.

"Trying to poison me?"

"I think you're way ahead of the game there, Trowa."

She stood, hands on her hips, and watched him drain the cup.

"It's because you think I'm scrawny, right?"

Sally rolled her eyes at him.

"Trowa, are you _serious_?"

"You said it."

"I- Sure. Fine. I did. When you were eighteen - or whatever you were - you were scrawny, and I was definitely not interested in you. And it wasn't because you were scrawny, Trowa. It was because you were a fucked-up kid who had just survived a war by pretending to be a dead guy and then pretending to be the enemy you were fighting against."

"I still use his name," Trowa pointed out. "I'm still fucked-up."

He sighed, piecing it together.

"So that's it? I'm too fucked-up? That makes sense. You're-" Trowa gestured at her, "you're perfect, and I'm fucked-up."

Sally laughed and ran her hands through her hair.

"Okay, I'm _not_ perfect, and this isn't a contest of who is the most fucked-up, but you aren't the only one in this hideous room who is fucked-up."

He tilted his head as he stared at her, trying to figure out why she was offering him comfort.

Sally sighed and sat back down on the couch, folding her legs under her and leaning against the stark white cushions.

"Did you know the Academy asked me to come back? To deliver the commencement address? I didn't even realize the fucking place was still standing." She gave a bitter laugh. "Trowa, I graduated at the top of my class and I went right into Intelligence. Do you have any idea how- how many interrogations I was part of, Trowa? Do you know how many colonials I- Trowa, _I'm_ a piece of shit. I spent so many years too stupid to look past what was right in front of me, and I _tortured_ people."

"So did I," he said, thinking of Duo, thinking of the OZ and Alliance officers he had encountered during the wars and 'convinced' to give him intel.

"So what makes me _perfect_ , then? Because I did it in a fancy uniform?"

"You stopped. You defected."

"Sure. Because I watched two kids almost kill themselves because they believed that strongly that the colonies were the victims."

"War is-"

"Don't, Trowa. I'm not looking for comfort, especially not from you."

The words cut through him, through the lingering haze of the gin and the depths of his own self-loathing.

"Right. Of course not."

He started to shift away, thinking to get up, maybe go outside, maybe-

She grabbed him, pulling him back onto the couch beside her.

"I didn't mean it like that. I just- I'm not enough of a monster that I want _you_ to comfort me. I'm not going to make my own victim tell me what I did wasn't horrible."

"I'm not your victim."

"But you could have been. Heero almost was."

He considered that, looking at the uncharacteristic dullness in Sally's eyes and the way she was curled into herself.

Trowa and Duo had hacked her files once, when Duo was working on the Preventers security network and testing it for weaknesses. He had let Trowa play with the code, challenging him to break through and offering him sexual favors as a reward for finding any weak points.

It had been a long, dry six weeks while Duo had perfected the system, until he had almost finished it and Trowa had finally managed to exploit a weakness in the system.

Sally _had_ done terrible things. Things that had given both Duo and Trowa pause, things that had Duo muttering _shit_ and wiping a hand over his mouth. _Explains why she's always ready to die for someone else_ , Duo had said as he backed them out of her files and started to repair the flaw in the system.

"Is that it, then? You never had an interest in me because you think I'm one of your victims?"

" _Trowa_ , why the hell are you so fixated on that?"

He wasn't entirely sure - except, of course, he was. Better to think about _that_ than the gaping empty spot in his heart that had once been occupied by Duo.

It was oddly painful, to wonder why Sally didn't want him, but it was a more manageable pain.

"I'd rather think about you than Duo right now," he admitted.

She looked at him with full eyes, and he wished he hadn't said it.

"Trowa-"

"Maybe you knew, huh? That I wasn't cut out for anything but sex? That I-"

"For the love of- Are you _blind_ , Trowa?"

Her vehemence startled him.

"No?" His response was hesitant, half-convinced that it was the wrong answer.

She snorted.

"Could have fooled me. Trowa, I'm interested in you. I was interested in you before you and Duo became a thing, but I was still a complete walking disaster. And then you and Duo became you and Duo - and then you _weren't,_ and I've watched you just fall apart for two and a half years, and every time I tried to ask you out you brushed me off."

"I-"

He was blind, Trowa realized. He was blind, and he was stupid.

After breaking up with Duo, after distancing himself from Wufei once they got together, he had started to join Sally less and less at the bar, always wondering if Duo or Wufei would show up. Eventually, he had started coming up with excuses to put her off, and after months of that, she had stopped asking. He still went out drinking, whenever a group of agents were headed to the bar, and he still gravitated to the open seat Sally always seemed to have beside her, but he hadn't- he hadn't realized her invitations to go out were anything more than concern for him, anything more than friendship.

Even so, even _now_ , he knew he still would have said no. He hadn't felt he deserved her friendship back then. He sure as hell wouldn't have felt he deserved anything more from her.

"I guess I am blind," he concluded.

She shook her head and offered him a rueful smile.

"No kidding."

Suddenly, the world seemed to shift, just a little, and he thought back to that afternoon, when they had arrived at the hotel and Sally had insisted they practice their cover, when he had upset her with his attempt to overlook her windswept appearance and-

"You _like_ me."

"That is exactly what I just said, yes. Tell me how you _possibly_ manage to pick up anyone when you're drunk? Because I swear you are more dense than I thought possible about all of this."

"It's easy to pick up a one-night stand when I'm drunk," Trowa shrugged. "I never have to see them again."

She lifted her eyebrows.

"So, what? No future means witty pickup lines?"

"No, it means neither of us is all that interested in anything other than getting naked."

"Fair." She looked at him, her eyes impossible to read. "Trowa-"

"You don't eat your cocktail garnishes."

Sally blinked and stared at him.

"Um… no. No, I don't. They're there for aesthetics, not as snacks. What does that have to do with anything?"

He shrugged.

"I usually offer my garnish, and that's all I need to do."

"What? You hand over your stick of olives and clothes are suddenly getting ripped off?"

Trowa had to smirk at her dubious expression.

"No." He shifted closer, angling his body to face hers on the couch, and he reached out with his right hand.

He traced his thumb over her lower lip.

"I offer it to you like this. It works best with olives, but cherries work well too."

"Is _that_ why you started drinking Old Fashioneds?"

Trowa nodded, and Sally laughed.

"You don't even _like_ bourbon."

"I like not going home alone more than I dislike bourbon."

" _Trowa_."

He was insanely grateful that Sally _hadn't_ ever had an opportunity to interrogate him during the war. He was being painfully forthcoming, and maybe it was the combination of alcohol, depression, and the lust he had to admit he felt for her, but it was embarrassing just how much he was telling her.

" _Sally_ ," he echoed, trying to push both of them away from that uncomfortably painful place he had lured them.

"I don't have any cherries or olives, unfortunately."

"I wouldn't eat them if you did," she countered, leaning towards him ever-so-slightly.

"You hate cherries," he remembered, letting his thumb map her jaw from chin to ear. She shivered and leaned into the touch.

"I don't mind olives."

"Just so long as they don't come from your cocktail glass."

"Trowa, are you going to kiss me or not?"

He shifted his hand, cradling the back of her skull and gently tugging her against him.

Their lips met, and Trowa felt his breath catch.

He had kissed her just hours before, had felt his nerves tingle at her nearness, at the feel of her against him.

But _now_ \- Now, it was so much more.

Sally's lips were smooth and firm, pliant in a delicious way that made Trowa want to keep kissing her until he forgot what it felt like to do anything else.

She shifted against him, finding a new angle, and her lips teased against his mouth.

Sally's hands wrapped around his neck and she ran her tongue over his lower lip, teasing him until Trowa opened his mouth and her tongue slid inside.

She tasted like gin and lime and _Sally_.

He pulled her against him, lying back on the couch and bringing her with him so that their bodies were flush from ankle to chest.

She moaned into his mouth and her tongue tangled with his, the sensation sending a jolt of lust straight to his groin.

Trowa held her close and reveled in the feel of her body against his, of just how perfectly she fit against him, aligned just _so_.

Her body was hard and soft, molding against him, supple under his hands as he skimmed them over her back and lower, to the curve of her ass.

She moaned again and moved against him, legs shifting over his as she pressed close, and Trowa released his own sound of pleasure, a surprised groan that she swallowed greedily.

Trowa hauled her up over his body, feeling the firm peaks of her nipples brushing against his chest as she moved with him.

It was, at once, an incredible familiar and intoxicatingly new sensation. How many times had he had Sally's body pressed against him while they sparred? When they were huddled together for cover?

Amazing how arousal and alcohol could completely change his perception of her. Then again, he had _always_ found her attractive. Had _always_ wanted to feel her thighs spread over him and run his hands over the powerful muscles of her legs and palm the firm globes of her ass.

 _Now,_ he was simply in a situation where he _could_.

Sally eased back from the kiss, and he felt her lips form into a smile as he lifted his head in an attempt to maintain contact.

"That was… a lot better than we managed this afternoon," she said.

Trowa smirked, but he silently and wholeheartedly agreed.

She ran her hand over the side of his face, fingers combing through his hair and smoothing it away.

The way she was looking at him, as if she could see every thought he tried not to think, as if she knew all of the hidden corners of his soul where he hid himself, had him struggling not to squirm away from her.

"You're drunk," she sighed, fingers trailing over his jaw and then his chin, tracing over the faint scar just below his mouth, a souvenir from his days as a teenaged terrorist.

"Not that drunk," he pointed out, wondering if he should remove his hands from her ass. Then again, if Sally didn't want him touching her, she would make that abundantly clear.

She arched an eyebrow at him.

"I'm as drunk as I usually am for these things."

He knew it was the wrong thing to say even before the words were out of his mouth, even before Sally was pushing against his chest and sitting up, even before she was off the couch and out of the room and he was alone, staring after her.

 _Fuck_.

She had disappeared into the bedroom, and Trowa didn't know if he should follow her or stay where he was. After all-

"You are an idiot, Trowa Barton."

She was back, eyes blazing with fury in the dim light and hair bouncing around her shoulders as she stalked towards him.

"I thought we had already established that."

She made a frustrated sound and crossed her arms over her chest, and then she sighed and shook her head.

"No, this is my fault. I tell you that you're worth more than a drunken one-night stand, and then I practically _jump_ you and-"

"You asked me if I was going to kiss you. And then _I_ was the one feeling you up. You didn't jump me at all."

Which, now that Trowa thought about it, was a shame. He imagined Sally _jumping_ him would be very memorable.

"This is a bad - and I mean _bad_ \- idea." She was frowning, the look on her face all-too-familiar to Trowa. He had seen Sally talk herself into and out of things before - it was impressive how quickly and forcefully she could change her own mind.

"It's not _that_ bad of an idea," he tried to argue. "Not as bad as… me going to Duo and Wufei's house and trying to apologize."

She gave him a look.

"That's not exactly a great scale for judging the merit of something, Trowa," she muttered.

That was true enough.

But Trowa didn't want to spend the night on this couch, alone with his thoughts - with his demons taunting him and with the hope of Sally actually interested in _him_ slipping further and further away as she convinced herself what a bad investment her time in him would be.

He had sat there beside her on that damn couch and confessed more to her than he had to _anyone_ , far more than he had ever wanted to. And Sally- Sally had looked him in the eyes and told him she was a monster.

He rose from the couch, and Sally looked at him a little warily.

"You want me," he said, slowly closing the space between them.

She huffed out an irritated breath.

" _Obviously_. I said as much and-"

He kissed her again, swallowing her words. Almost immediately, her arms came up around his neck, and she met his lips forcefully, seemingly as intent on devouring him as Trowa was on devouring _her_.

Trowa moved away from her lips, kissing her cheek, the juncture of her jaw and ear, and then licking a trail down her neck before placing another kiss against her fluttering pulse.

"And I want you," he said into her ear.

She shivered against him, drawing in a ragged breath and then pressing her lips against his neck, biting down gently right on the spot that had always made Trowa feel a little weak in the knees.

She pulled away enough to reach for his hand.

"I've got condoms in my bag."

Trowa had to laugh.

"Have you been _planning_ on seducing me this whole time?"

"No," she growled, and shot him a mock-glare as she tugged him towards the bedroom. "I just like to always be prepared. They're part of my med kit."

Trowa _could_ tease her about that, and in fact had a comment already on the tip of his tongue, but Sally pressed her free hand over his groin, hand stroking his half-hard cock through the fabric of his trousers, and he abruptly lost his train of thought.

Sally smirked.

"And all this time, I never knew the easiest way to get you to stop sassing me was to grab your cock."

"You're welcome to use this technique any time you want in the future," he assured Sally, her touch arousing him almost embarrassingly quickly.

"Hm. Clearly it isn't the _perfect_ solution," she teased him, and he had to laugh.

"Maybe you just need to perfect your technique," he suggested.

Sally snorted a laugh and then moved her hand away, to his hip, and gave him a push towards the bed.

Trowa took the hint and lay on it, propping himself up on his elbows and looking at Sally as she stalked towards him.

It was darker in the bedroom, the spill of light from the sitting area barely illuminating anything, and the moonlight filtering through the riotously-colored curtains provided almost nothing except a silver glow to Sally's face and hair.

She crawled onto the bed and straddled his lap, her dress riding up to expose her firm thighs.

"Relena said something about this being your favorite position," Sally murmured, pressing a light kiss against his lips and then moving to trace his earlobe with her tongue.

Trowa gripped her thighs, easing his fingers under the hem of her dress and trying _very_ hard not to rock up into the heat of her body, pressed so close to his cock.

It suddenly occurred to him that Relena might have told Sally about his neck - how biting into _that_ spot nearly did him in every time. He wondered, almost afraid, what else Relena had told her.

"It is," he confirmed. "Yours?"

She smirked against his ear and started to unbutton his shirt.

"Coincidentally, _this_ one."

Trowa had to chuckle at that. Sally riding him was definitely a fantasy he had harbored for years.

And here she was, in his lap, teasing him and feeling so damn perfect it felt like it _had_ to be a dream.

He delved further under her dress, pushing the fabric up to her waist and exposing the lacy fabric of her panties to his explorations. He teased along the edge, pulling the thin fabric away just enough to run the tips of his fingers over her skin.

Sally tugged his shirt free of his trousers and shoved it down his shoulders. Reluctantly, Trowa pulled his hands away from her and helped her remove it entirely.

"Not scrawny at all," she complimented him as she smoothed her hands over his stomach and up his chest, gently tweaking his nipples before lowering her head to kiss him again.

Trowa growled at the remark, and she smirked against his mouth just before parting her lips and swiping her tongue against his, sending sparks of desire through him radiating from every point of contact with her, warming his entire body.

He let himself return to his earlier explorations, satisfied when Sally's legs spread farther to allow him to trace not just where her panties framed her ass, but lower and far more intimately.

She was radiating heat, and the lace felt wonderfully damp as he ran his fingers between her legs and found the thick curls around her sex.

She arched against him, lips trailing against his cheek and a delighted moan ruffling his hair.

"Speaking of ways to put an end to sass." He smirked against her cheek as she gave a throaty chuckle in response to the taunt.

A chuckle that turned into a stuttered gasp as he parted her folds with two fingers and stroked the soft, damp lips of her labia.

Her hands clutched at him as he found the sensitive bundle of nerves near her hood and she made a sound that he didn't even think Sally was _capable_ of making - a needy, mewling sound that made his cock _twitch_ in response.

He used his free hand to pull her face back against his, seeking out her mouth and giving her a fierce kiss.

He curled his fingers inside her, stroking from her clit to her channel, enjoying the way she shuddered against him as he went from her most sensitive spot to teasing deeper inside her body and then back again.

Trowa flicked his thumb over her clit, and Sally's thighs clenched around him and her entire body arched into his.

She broke their kiss with a breathless gasp, and he looked up into her face, at her wild eyes and swollen lips.

"Jesus Christ, Sally," he groaned into her ear. "You're on fire. You're going to _consume_ me."

"That's what you say to everyone," she teased him.

"No," he assured her, "it's what I'm saying to _you_. You feel like heaven, Sally. You're so incredible, so damn _perfect,_ and here you are, ready to fall apart in my arms."

She groaned as he continued to stroke her, as he found a pace and pressure that had her writhing against him.

As fantastic as this was, however, the angle wasn't at _all_ comfortable on his wrist. He eased his hand away, and she gave a whimper of protest that had him kissing her again.

"Mind if we try a different position?"

"That depends on what you had in mind."

He laughed and put his hands on Sally's hips, steadying her before he rolled them and laid her back against the comforter.

She didn't look terribly impressed at the idea of a missionary position, and Trowa smirked down at her.

He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties.

"I think these need to go."

"The condoms are-"

"We don't need them yet," Trowa assured her as he eased the lacy fabric over her thighs and then down her legs.

He carelessly tossed them to the floor and then reversed the path his hands had just taken, pushing Sally's legs wide and leaning over her as he did.

He pressed a kiss to her clavicle and then another to the skin just below. He moved to the side, grazing over the fabric of her dress with his open mouth before kissing her right breast, teasing her nipple through the fabric until she arched up against him and her fingers dug into his hair.

Trowa lingered long enough to give the same treatment to her other breast, and then he trailed more kisses down her belly and then skipped over the fabric bunched around her waist to kiss her thighs, licking and nipping his way towards his goal.

"Trowa, you're such a _tease_ ," Sally laughed, the sound hoarse and sexy as hell, when he licked at the junction of her hip and groin.

He laughed himself, and she trembled as his breath puffed against her curls.

Curls that beckoned him closer, and he abandoned the pretense of ignoring the scent of her, the _feel_ of her, the _taste_ of her as he licked her with the flat of his tongue, parting her lips and sucking her clit into his mouth in one gesture that had Sally swearing and thrusting her hips up insistently.

"Oh my _God_ , Trowa. _Fuck_ -" she trailed off, moaning again as he swirled his tongue around her clit, alternating between sucking on the sensitive bud and teasing her entrance by thrusting his tongue into her.

Her thighs quivered on either side of his head, and the feel of her, so fully giving herself over to pleasure, to _him_ , had Trowa rock-hard and just barely refraining from humping against the mattress.

She tasted divine, heady and primal, all sex and Sally, and he lapped at her greedily, knowing it was likely he would never have the chance to do this again and wanting to make the most of it.

Sally rocked against him, her sounds of pleasure guiding him to find the right way to caress her, and he discovered that using his mouth on her clit and the hood of her sex while he teasingly thrust into her with two fingers had her undulating against him and whispering his name as if she was praying.

Trowa took his time, committing to memory each sound she made, each sharp inhale and trembling release of breath, each broken iteration of his name that fell from her lips.

He could feel the shift in her body, the trembling of her limbs and the clutch of her hands at his hair, as she neared climax, and he redoubled his efforts, stroking her with tongue and fingers, sucking her and fucking her, and she came with a moan and a painful tug on his hair. He could feel her body clench around his fingers, could feel the rush of her orgasm, and he eased the pressure of his mouth, gently stroking her down from the high, until her thighs fell to the bed and she released her grip on his hair.

"Oh my _God_ , Trowa. That was…"

"Decent? At least a four out of ten?"

She snorted and tugged him up to kiss her, a long, lingering clash of teeth and tongue as they shared the taste of her pleasure between them.

"At least a nine," she assured him.

"And what kept it from being a ten?"

She smirked up at him and reached between them to pinch his nipple.

Trowa hissed and thrust against her, the pain sparking through him, right to his cock.

"I like a little pain with my pleasure," she told him.

Sally Po telling him that she liked a _little pain with her pleasure_ was nearly enough to make Trowa come right then.

He thought she had sounded glorious before, moaning for him, encouraging him as he plundered her body with his tongue and fingers. But _this_ -

Trowa wished he could count on a future encounter, a chance to discover just what blend of pain and pleasure would leave Sally sated and sublimely wrecked.

She ran her hand down his chest and to the waist of his trousers.

"I think you're a little overdressed for what _I_ have planned for you, Barton."

He smirked at the teasing tone and he eased away from her, rising to his knees on the bed beside her.

His erection was pressed against the front of his trousers, the damp spot and bulging fabric giving away just how thoroughly he had enjoyed getting Sally off.

She mirrored his position, kneeling beside him and running her hands over his naked torso, raking her nails against his skin just hard enough to make him hiss and close his eyes to better enjoy the sensation.

"Hm. I see I'm not the only one who likes a little pain with my pleasure," she murmured.

He felt the brush of her hair against his chest, and then the sharp points of her teeth biting into the skin around his right nipple and drawing the flesh into her mouth.

He groaned and clutched at her head.

Had Relena told her about that too? Or was he just that easy for Sally to read?

She released him and flicked her tongue over the spot, soothing the flesh and teasing him in one swipe.

Her hands, meanwhile, were industriously working to open the fly of his trousers, and he had to sigh in relief when she released his cock from the confines of his trousers and briefs.

"Shall I return the favor?" she teased him, fingers curling around his shaft and giving an experimental stroke.

He thrust up in her grip and clutched at her shoulders.

"I'd rather-" He struggled to collect his thoughts, struggled to focus on her smirking lips instead of the fingers smearing precum over the head of his cock and teasing at the _so_ damn sensitive underside.

Sally used her other hand to massage his sac, her touch light, testing, until she discovered that by pressing against his perineum had him moaning her name and pulling her into a kiss, desperate to keep from crying out, desperate to wipe the pleased smirk from her face, desperate for more.

He was already so wound up - the liquor, the highs and lows of the evening, and the taste of Sally still on his tongue combining to leave him unusually sensitive.

The image of Sally's mouth wrapped around his cock was so damn tempting, but he knew he wasn't going to have the stamina to go another round, knew he didn't have the fortitude to last through her doing that to him _and_ still be able to fuck her, and Trowa _needed_ to know what it felt like to be buried inside the glorious heat of Sally's body.

"I think it's time for the condoms," he told her.

She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth before releasing him and moving to the side of the bed.

She got up and went into the bathroom.

Trowa, meanwhile, hastily shucked out of the rest of his clothes.

When Sally came back, it was clear she had had the same idea - her dress was gone and she approached him completely naked, her breasts swaying with each step, her areola dark and nearly as riveting as the triangle of thick curls between her legs.

"I see great minds think alike," she teased him as she climbed back onto the bed, dropping a foil wrapper by his side.

He pulled her back onto his thighs, the position she had put them in when they first moved to the bedroom, and Sally settled against him, curls against his hard cock, rocking against him, her lips parting teasingly.

Trowa just _barely_ refrained from thrusting into her, and he distracted himself by palming her exposed breasts. He flicked his thumb against her nipples, until they became stiff in his touch and Sally's hands dug into his shoulders.

He remembered what she had said, what she had done to _him_ , and he urged her onto her knees so that he could taste her.

He lapped at the smooth skin, mapping the swell of her breast with his tongue before laving at her nipple and then sucking it into his mouth. He didn't bite down immediately, even though she stiffened in anticipation. Instead, he taunted her, sucking until she was shifting against him, enjoying it even though it wasn't what she had expected. And _then_ he bit down, just that side of painful, and Sally cried out and clutched at him.

Trowa reached between them, parting her with his fingers and finding her sex wet and eager for him. He gentled his attention on her breast before switching to the other side even as he caressed her clit with his fingers.

Instead of biting down on her other nipple, however, he pinched her clit between his fingers, and she nearly jumped out of his arms.

"You're going to kill me, Trowa," she groaned, and he had to chuckle.

"That wouldn't exactly work out for _my_ plans with you," he said, and removed his hand.

He reached for the condom and her gaze followed him, attention focused on the movement of his hands as he tore open the wrapper and then eased the sheath over his painfully-hard erection.

Trowa gripped himself, stroking his hand over the shaft.

Sally's hand, smaller and just a shade darker, joined his, and together they guided him to her entrance.

Slowly, Sally lowered herself onto him, her body tight and welcoming and _so_ hot as she took inch after inch of him into her.

It seemed like forever before he was buried to the hilt, until her ass rested against his thighs, and the embrace of her body was nearly overwhelming.

And then she started to move, thighs flexing as she rose up and then impaled herself again.

"Jesus, Sally."

He wrapped his arms around her, unsure which of them he was steadying.

The rhythm of her movements was slow, the erotic slide of his cock into her depths leaving him breathless and desperate for the next rise and fall of her hips,

She was looking at him with dark eyes, and he found it as maddeningly impossible to look away from her face as it was to hold her gaze. It felt, once again, as if she saw _everything_ , as if she _knew_ everything.

He reached out and wrapped his right hand in her hair, pulling hard enough for her to gasp and making her tilt her head back to alleviate the pressure.

Trowa took advantage of the movement to bite her neck, teasing her skin with his teeth until she was moaning and her careful rhythm faltered.

He used his other hand to find her clit again, the combined pressure of his cock sliding against her and the more focused attention of his fingers making her whimper.

" _Trowa_."

He didn't think anyone had ever said his name like that - as though she was pleading with him and claiming him as hers in one breath, demanding more from him and possessing all of him at the same time.

He flexed his hips, further upsetting her rhythm, and she abandoned her attempts to tease him with the excruciatingly slow pace, instead giving both of them what they needed.

She moved faster, practically bouncing over him, and he thrust up to meet each downward motion of her body, until Sally's nails were digging into his shoulders and Trowa had to force himself to let go of her hair so that he didn't hurt her.

He managed to last until she came, fighting against the tide of his own pleasure until she cried out and her body clenched at him, spasming around his cock and drawing him even deeper, holding him even tighter.

His own climax engulfed him, shocking in its intensity, and his vision sparked and the entire _world_ was momentarily forgotten as he clung to Sally and shouted his release into her shoulder.

Minutes, hours, maybe _days_ later, he was finally able to breathe again, finally able to feel something that wasn't _everything_ around him being blissfully engulfed by his own pleasure.

Sally eased away from him and he winced as she moved, his half-hard cock almost too sensitive for the slide of her body against him as she pulled away and rolled onto her back beside him.

"I'm not sure calling you a sex god really does you justice," she sighed.

He smirked over at her, taking in the boneless quality of her pose, the satisfied look on her face, and the shine of her own pleasure on her spread thighs.

"I'm not sure what to call _you_ at all. Goddess doesn't even begin to describe you," he murmured, leaning down and playfully nipping at one thigh. She shied away from him until he ran his tongue over her skin, indulging himself in one last taste.

Sally snorted and pushed his head away as he started to work his way up her thigh, his _one last taste_ turning into another and then another.

"You don't have to use one of your lines on me, Barton."

He sat up and looked down at her again, at the faint smile curving her lips, and he wondered what she wanted from him.

Trowa gingerly removed the condom and tied it off.

He rose from the bed on legs that were a little boneless themselves, and disposed of the condom in the bathroom before rejoining Sally on the bed.

He curled around her, and she shifted.

He was afraid she was going to pull away from him, afraid he was about to be banished back to the couch, but instead she adjusted the sheets and duvet around them and then settled against him, her back against his front, and pulled his arm around her waist.

It was rare that his one-night stands stayed the night. Rarer still that they had any interest in post-coital _cuddling_.

Duo had been the last person to let Trowa hold him in bed, the last to relax into his touch and share the intimacy of lying together naked, drifting together as their post-climax euphoria slowly faded away and they returned to reality.

"Thank you," he said.

She turned her head to look back at him.

"For what? The sex? Don't worry, the pleasure was all mine. Well, not _all_ mine. But enough mine, at least."

He smirked at that and kissed her. She returned it, teasing and gentle.

"Thank you for…" Not kicking him out of her bed. Not looking at him like he was the scum of the earth. Not turning her back on him.

"You're welcome," she said, and her fingers tangled with his against her stomach.

He idly traced over her scar. He didn't need to say anything else.

"You should probably get a glass of water and take something. You're going to have an awful hangover in the morning," Sally warned him with a yawn.

"I'll be fine." Trowa was fairly certain she was right, but the thought of moving, of leaving her side, held zero appeal.

Instead, he pressed a kiss to her neck, adjusted the pillow under his head, and let himself drift off to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: For Ro, who is amazing in all the ways

A/N2: For the GWBlock Party on Tumblr's end of summer trope fest. I decided to do some fake dating.

A/N3: Badass, Preventers Hilde is totally inspired by Kangofu-CB's amazing fic, Mission: Redacted. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and go devour it. This will still be waiting when you get back.

A/N4: Eternal thanks to Ro for support and for beta reading

A/N5: Also a huge thanks to Kango-CB, who babysat and cheerled me through writing the things and seriously, thank you.

A/N6: Title from the song by Sylvan Esso

Warnings: language, smut, slight violence

Pairings: 3xS, others - I'm not giving it away yet sorry if that's going to bother you

Just Dancing

Trowa woke up to pounding.

Pounding in his skull as he lifted it, and- pounding on the door of the hotel room.

Trowa looked around cautiously, his head and stomach protesting as he moved.

The sheets and comforter were a tangled mess, wrapped around his legs and Sally's, leaving both of their bodies exposed to the sunlight streaming through the window.

"What the hell is going on?" Sally muttered, rolling over onto her back and tugging at the sheets.

The movement further jostled Trowa, and he wasn't at all able to appreciate the sight of Sally's toned body before she covered herself up and rolled onto her side.

"I have no idea."

But the pounding wasn't stopping, and Trowa reluctantly and carefully dragged himself out of the bed.

He stumbled a few steps before catching himself against the wall and closing his eyes while he focused all of his attention on not vomiting.

More pounding.

"Hold on!" he shouted, irritated and fairly confident he was experiencing the worst hangover he had had in years. He should have drank more water last night, as Sally had suggested.

Trowa finally managed to force his stomach into some semblance of peace, and he opened his eyes so that he could look for his clothes.

Gingerly, he picked up his trousers and pulled them on, breathing deeply and evenly as he did so and wishing to hell he was still in bed, curled around Sally and sleeping this off.

Instead, he was up, was pulling trousers on and making his way to the door of the hotel and very resentfully opening it.

Duo stood in front of him, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, his hair loose around his shoulders and his face-

He was a mess.

Trowa had seen Duo like this before, when Duo had been called into Une's office after dicey missions, when Duo had been called to give testimony in the trial that had resulted in one of the most prolific and horrific L3 crime bosses being sentenced to life in prison, when Duo had been contacted by a middle-aged couple on L2 who thought they might be his parents.

"Duo."

"Trowa. I- Can I come in?"

He stood to one side, leaning heavily against the door.

"Look, can we just- Holy shit. Uh, hey, Sally."

Trowa turned to see Duo staring at Sally, still in bed, and still naked except for the sheet wrapped around her.

"Morning, Duo." She sounded and looked annoyed.

"I, uh, wow. So you two really are… Right. Sure. Yeah." Duo laughed, and then scrubbed his face with his hands. "Of course. Yeah. Well. I just- I should go. This is-"

Trowa caught Duo's wrist as the other man moved back towards the door.

"Duo, what's going on?"

Duo looked from their hands to Trowa's face, his throat working and his eyes full.

"Give me a minute to get dressed and I'll go get some breakfast for us, Trowa." Sally started to move to the edge of the bed, still clutching the sheets against her. "While you two… do your thing."

Duo eased himself free from Trowa's grip and moved to sit in the armchair next to the couch.

Trowa closed the door to the bedroom so that Sally could have some privacy, and he sat down on the couch.

A moment later, Sally came out of the bedroom and thrust a cup of water in one of Trowa's hands and two white pills into his other.

"Acetaminophen. You should have taken some last night."

"I was a little distracted."

Her expression softened, and as Trowa drank the water, he noticed that she was wearing his shirt, tucked into the jeans she had worn yesterday for their trip to La Rochelle.

"Nice shirt."

She rolled her eyes at him, and then looked over at Duo.

"Can I get you anything?"

Duo shook his head.

"No, no, I'm- I'm fine. Thanks. I- Sorry. Yeah."

Sally rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath before walking out of the hotel room, leaving Duo and Trowa alone together for the first time in three years.

"I… Sorry. You look like shit."

"You don't look much better," he assured Duo, and then instantly regretted it.

Duo was startled into a laugh.

"Thanks. That's what every groom wants to hear on his wedding day."

"What do you want to hear? What- Why are you here ?"

Duo stretched his legs in front of him and smoothed his palms over his thighs, the nervous gesture so very familiar to Trowa.

"I- I just… 'Ro isn't… He's not good at comforting me, you know? I tell him I'm freaked the fuck out, and his response is to tell me his car has a full tank of gas and we could be at seven different airports in less than three hours."

Trowa had to laugh, and he instantly regretted it.

"So you came to me? For what? A reminder that you made the right choice? The chance to finally tell me off for what I did to you?"

Duo shrugged.

"Maybe? I just- I don't know. 'Ro gave me the bullshit about the tank of gas and I feel like I'm crawling out of my fucking skin, and I just- I just wanted to see you. I needed to see you."

Trowa very carefully did not look at Duo's face as he said that. It was bad enough to remember what Duo looked like when he said those words.

"Here I am," he made a gesture at himself.

"Yeah, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm hungover. From celebrating your nuptials."

Duo sighed.

"Trowa-"

"Duo, what do you want me to say? What do you need me to say? That you made the right choice? That Wufei loves you? That you've never looked happier? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to tell me why I wasn't enough for you."

Trowa did look at Duo now, at Duo's too-bright eyes and his not-quite-steady mouth and his clenched fists.

"Duo-"

"You- What did I do wrong, Tro? What was it about me that- I wasn't good enough, was I? And now- now I'm about to make such a big fucking mistake, aren't I? Because you couldn't put up with me for six fucking years before it was too much, and there's no way that Wufei will be able to- Why wasn't I enough, Tro?"

He felt like Duo had stabbed him with a knife, had gutted him from nape to groin. The bile curdling in his throat was suddenly almost choking him as he looked into Duo's eyes and saw the genuine despair there.

"It wasn't- Duo, it wasn't you. It was never about you. You- you were enough, Duo. You were so much more than I ever deserved, than I ever thought I would have, and I- I fucked it up because of me, Duo, not because of you."

"And her?" Duo jerked his head towards the bedroom where Sally had been moments before. "She's… what, just right? Just enough to keep you from-"

"Duo, it's not like that. It's-" It was impossible to even begin to explain what was going on between Sally and him. And as much as he knew he would owe Duo apologies for the rest of his life - especially now, especially after hearing Duo ask him why wasn't I enough in that heartbroken voice - Trowa didn't want to talk to him about Sally.

"It wasn't about you, Duo," he repeated lamely.

Duo nodded stiffly, and looked away from Trowa.

"Yeah. Sure. Right. Well, I should- I should go."

And once again, Trowa reached out for Duo and stopped him from walking out.

Twice in one morning, when he hadn't even managed it once all those years ago. The irony was bitter on Trowa's tongue as he realized how different things might now be, if all he had done was to reach out for Duo that night.

"Wufei worships you, Duo. And he's a hell of a lot smarter than me. He knows what a good thing you are, and he's not going to fuck it up. He loves you."

"So did you. Or at least, that's what you said," Duo reminded him.

"I did love you. I do love you. But that- that doesn't mean it was right, what we had."

Duo looked mutinous, looked ready to start a fight, and Trowa held up a hand to placate him.

"What you have now, with Wufei, is so much better, Duo. The way you two look at each other- The world could crumble into ashes and it wouldn't fucking matter."

Duo rolled his eyes.

"Jesus, Trowa, of course that would matter. What the fuck does that even mean?"

And this, Trowa thought with a fond smirk, was the reason why Duo despised Valentine's Day, why he didn't get grand romantic gestures, why he was afraid Wufei would do to him what Trowa had.

"Wufei isn't going to cheat on you, Duo. Just because I did- Look, I'm a very unique kind of asshole, as you used to say. It's not going to happen again."

Duo sighed.

"Yeah, but what if- what if he gets tired of me or-"

"Duo, I don't think it's possible to get tired of you. You- you're amazing, Duo Maxwell. And you deserve someone who knows it and wants to spend the rest of his life making the mistake of cramming your office full of Valentine's Day shit."

Duo's lips twitched.

"I can't fucking believe that was him. I used to think it was you, you know? Getting back at me or some shit."

"I might be stupid, but I'm not enough of an idiot to do that."

Duo sighed.

"Yeah, that's what 'Ro said too. Look, I- What happened with us-"

"Duo, I want you to be happy."

Duo bit the corner of his lower lip and shrugged.

"I want that for you too, Tro. I really do. Are you- Things with Sally are… good? Better than us?"

"Different than us," Trowa said cautiously. He still wasn't sure what things were with Sally, what he wanted them to be - what she wanted them to be.

Duo blew out a long breath, the air ruffling his bangs.

"Okay. I should probably head home, before Heero starts thinking I took off."

"Without his fully-gassed getaway car?"

Duo smirked.

"How do you think I got here? Wufei's got our car."

Trowa chuckled, imagining Heero's face as he tried to figure out what to say about Duo making a getaway from his own wedding with Heero's assistance.

"You don't look like shit," Trowa said as Duo started to open the door.

Duo arched an eyebrow at him.

"You do. Make sure you shower and drink some coffee - I don't want you looking ready to puke in all the wedding photos."

"Do you want me there? I can stay here."

Duo shook his head.

"No. No, I'd really like you to be there, Tro. With me."

"Then I'll be there."

Duo offered him a smile, corners faltering a little, and let himself out of the room.

Trowa eased himself onto the couch, stretching out and closing his eyes and praying Sally came back with food and coffee soon. Or a way to euthanize him. Anything , at this point, to make his body stop hurting.

Of course, if she did euthanize him, it would more or less ruin all of his plans to convince her to turn this into more than a fake-date, one-night stand.

-o-

The End


End file.
